Sean Misko<\/a>, 37,\u00a0was the<\/a>\u00a0director for the Gulf States at the National Security Council from 2015 until the first half of 2018. Ciaramella, 33, a career CIA analyst, was Ukraine director on the NSC from at least 2016 until the summer of 2017. Both officials arrived during the Obama administration and left during the Trump administration.<\/p>\n In September, the whistleblower accused Trump of abusing the presidency by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. The complaint is now the focus of Democratic-led\u00a0impeachment proceedings<\/a>.<\/p>\n Schiff\u00a0initially denied<\/a>\u00a0he had any knowledge about the complaint prior to its filing in mid-August, saying on Sep. 17: \u201cWe have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. We would like to.” But it was later found that this\u00a0statement was false<\/a>\u00a0and a member of his staff\u00a0had spoken<\/a> to the whistleblower before the complaint was filed on Aug. 12.<\/p>\n Misko joined Schiff’s staff in August 2019. Six months earlier, Schiff had hired Abigail Grace, another former NSC official who worked for both the Obama and Trump administrations.\u00a0The\u00a0Washington Examiner\u00a0<\/i>reported on Oct. 10<\/a>\u00a0that the alleged whistleblower was on the NSC and worked with Biden. Ciaramella was a\u00a0guest of Biden’s<\/a>\u00a0at a State Department banquet.<\/p>\n Before joining the NSC, Misko worked in the Obama administration as a member of the secretary of state\u2019s policy planning staff for deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan, who became Hillary Clinton’s senior foreign policy adviser during her 2016 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n Ciaramella<\/a>\u00a0and Misko were described to the\u00a0Washington Examiner<\/i>\u00a0as workplace friends who had similarly antagonistic attitudes toward the Trump administration and were witnessed by a former National Security Council official, like Ciaramella, a nonpolitical appointee, to frequently be around one another.<\/p>\n \u201cMy understanding was that they were friendly with one another,\u201d said the former official, who was senior to Ciaramella. \u201cThey would walk around the halls. Get lunch together and stuff like that.” He described them as “very much cut from the same cloth,” and their friendship as \u201cbro-like.”<\/p>\n The former official described Ciaramella as \u201cvery hostile\u201d toward him when they first met, and he asked the CIA officer about the type of competitive strategies he had put in place to compete with the Russians. \u201cAnd he looked at me like, ‘What are you talking about? We don’t do that stuff here. We don’t take on our adversaries here. We invite think tanks here to talk about issues.’\u201d<\/p>\n