I find it interesting that as the impeachment farce moves on, many of GEOTUS' supporters are focused like a laser beam on a ghost: There's no doubt that Eric Ciaramella is everything we think he is, but we spend little time looking at how he got there.

ICIG Atkinson's name almost never comes up. We know very little about him, other than at first glance he'd seem an unlikely partisan: He was nominated in 2017 by President Trump, and then fell mostly off the radar while "Muh Mueller" wound down.

Without going into the weeds, or diving into speculation, what do we know about him since then?

We know he bypassed the DNI with the Whistleblower complaint, and deemed the complaint against the President to be "Urgent." There were some muted rumblings about the potential for conflict of interest with the Whistleblower, but Atkinson's actions can only be seen as an attempt to get Ciaramella's testimony in front of the President's enemies.

Further, ICIG may not have known about Ciaramella before the complaint, but in vetting the allegation, it should have become apparent that the source should never have worked in the Intelligence Community again after being fired for leaking.

Then I read the linked article and a pattern begins to emerge. 1) Atkinson appeared to ignore any shadiness around the Ciaramella and bypassed process to damage the President.. 2) According to Republican lawmakers, he's stonewalling on investigating leaks within the Intelligence Community, and is effectively ignoring questions from the Oversight Committee.

We need to always remember that the whistleblower complaint would have been dismissed out of hand by DNI if ICIG Atkinson hadn't outright backstabbed the President. There has also been absolutely zero revelation on the misbehavior of the CIA and FBI from the guy who was ostensibly hired to ferret that out.

I'd entertain the possibility that he's deferring to Durham's investigation, but that effort (I thought) was targeting FISA abuse and not specifically directed at agency partisanship.

Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. It's feeling to me like this guy needs to be under our microscope at least as much as Eric Ciaramella. Thoughts?