In December 2019, a CIA analyst planted in the White House filed a whistleblower complaint that launched Trump's first impeachment.
Now the country knows who wrote his material.
Michael Shellenberger just traced the evidence straight back to a USAID-funded operation – and what he found goes well beyond one complaint.
The USAID Complaint That Impeached a President
The CIA analyst's complaint didn't rest on his own intelligence work.
It cited an organization called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project – OCCRP – four times as foundational evidence.
OCCRP's report claimed two Soviet-born Florida businessmen were "key hidden actors" in Trump's effort to investigate the Bidens, and that those men connected Rudy Giuliani to former Ukrainian prosecutors.
That report became the evidentiary spine of the entire House impeachment case.
Here's what Nancy Pelosi didn't mention during any of it: OCCRP was effectively created, funded, and controlled by USAID.
Under a cooperative agreement, USAID had to approve OCCRP's annual work plan and sign off on every key personnel hire – including Sullivan himself.
A USAID official named Shannon McGuire confirmed it on camera in a documentary produced by German broadcaster NDR: the agency held veto power over who ran the organization and what it worked on every single year.
That's not an independent journalism outlet.
That's a government-controlled operation with a press badge.
The Confession They Tried to Bury
OCCRP founder Drew Sullivan didn't just run a USAID cutout.
He bragged about it.
In the NDR documentary – filmed before Sullivan realized the project had turned critical – he boasted on camera that his organization had "probably been responsible for five or six countries changing over from one government to another government… and getting prime ministers indicted or thrown out."
When he saw the final cut, Sullivan pressured NDR management to kill it.
NDR complied, shelved the documentary, and ended its partnership with OCCRP in September 2023.
The film leaked in December 2024 through French investigative outlet Mediapart.
OCCRP's response to Shellenberger's reporting was to threaten a lawsuit – not to dispute a single fact.
The Treason Question Nobody in the Media Will Ask
In February 2025, Shellenberger testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and put it plainly: CIA, USAID, and OCCRP had all worked Trump's impeachment using the same regime change methods they deploy on foreign governments.
Rep. Thomas Massie asked the question that followed logically – when government agencies spend taxpayer money to take down their own government, isn't that treason?
Shellenberger said yes.
Trump defunded OCCRP through USAID after his 2024 reelection, and has since moved to shut the agency down entirely.
Five Governments Down Before They Tried It at Home
The deep state's regime change playbook runs on a short checklist: fund a journalism operation, plant a story through a credible-sounding outlet, let a government official react to the reporting, and watch the political crisis materialize.
They ran it in Ukraine from 2010 to 2014 – funding media networks and NGOs to amplify opposition narratives until the Yanukovych government fell.
They ran it in Cuba, where USAID secretly financed a text messaging network called ZunZuneo, disguised as a social platform, with the explicit goal of mobilizing anti-Castro opposition into street action.
They ran versions of the same operation in Bolivia, Venezuela, and country after country where a government inconvenienced American foreign policy elites.
In 2019, they ran it in Washington, D.C.
The CIA analyst was an Obama holdover.
His complaint relied on a USAID-funded report from an organization whose founder has since admitted – on camera – to toppling governments for a living.
That report fed a partisan House majority that had been hunting for an impeachment vehicle since inauguration day.
Trump was right all along.
Sources:
- Michael Shellenberger, Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, February 13, 2025.
- Michael Shellenberger, "USAID Tied to Trump's 2019 Impeachment," Public, February 5–6, 2025.
- RealClearPolitics, Shellenberger Congressional Hearing Transcript, February 14, 2025.
- Yann Philippin, "German broadcaster NDR censored own investigation into OCCRP," Mediapart, December 2024.
- Anadolu Agency, "Journalist called to testify on CIA-funded Trump impeachment," February 14, 2025.
