Now we know what the real Russian hoax looks like: much like the faltering effort by House Republicans to impeach President Biden.
The GOP's current adventure — which was always doomed to fail — was seriously undermined in federal court last month.
Opinion columnist
Robin Abkarian
Republicans thought they had smoking gun, a claim from a long-trusted FBI informant that Biden and his son Hunter secretly accepted millions of dollars from the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma. Unfortunately for Planet MAGA — including House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, impeachment author Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and a whole host of Fox hosts News, who were foaming at the mouth with this story – it's allegedly all a lie.
The smoking gun turns out to be an exploding cigar. And the informant? Not reliable after all.
Last month, a federal grand jury indicted Alexander Smirnov, 43, on charges of lying when he told the FBI that the Bidens received $5 million each from Burisma. Not only that, according to Special Counsel Jack Weiss, who is overseeing the investigation into Hunter Biden's finances, Smirnov was likely coached to concoct the story by agents linked to Russian intelligence in an attempt to hurt President Biden as he faces re-election, likely against Putin. He apologizes to former President Trump.
Boy, Vladimir Putin can't keep his nose out of the US presidential election.
On Wednesday, Weiss filed a motion asking the federal judge overseeing Smirnov's case to revoke his bail, alleging that Smirnov was “actively promoting new lies that could impact the U.S. election following his meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.” Weiss said Smirnov needed to remain in quarantine because he had the financial resources and connections to flee the country. Smirnov was arrested on Thursday in Las Vegas, where he lives.
Unfortunately, Republicans don't seem to accept that their impeachment efforts are collapsing from within.
“This does not change the basic facts,” Jordan insisted to reporters Wednesday in an exchange posted by Forbes on YouTube.
An off-camera journalist interrupted, saying: “It changes the facts, because they are no longer facts, because they are not true.”
How did we get here?
In June 2020, Smirnov, a dual citizen of Israel and the United States, passed unverified information to his FBI handler. He said he met with Burisma executives in 2015 and 2016, and they told him about their payments to the Biden family. At the time, Burisma was the subject of a criminal investigation by the corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, who was later fired. Smirnoff said he was told Hunter Biden would “take care of all those issues” — Burisma’s weaknesses — “through his father.”
Smirnov also said he was told it would be very difficult to trace the payments, and it would take a decade to find out where the money went.
MAGA Republicans have caught on to these accusations, which are laid out on an FBI form known as a 1023, a preliminary account of conversations between Smirnov and his FBI contact, with whom he spoke almost daily for 10 years, and thus the FBI believes he was like that. Dealing with a reliable source.
You can imagine the Republican Party's joy. They were so enthusiastic that they released the unredacted and unverified document.
However, the FBI later said that Smirnov lied about being in Ukraine in 2015 and 2016. According to the indictment, he had no contact with Burisma executives until 2017, long after Biden was out of office, and at any point. In this case, his dealings with Burisma were “routine and unusual.”
Really, it should be that way, in terms of impeachment.
“I think it's time for Chairman Comer and the Republicans to fold the tent in front of this circus show,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md), the ranking member on the Oversight Committee. “It's really over at this point.”
The perseverance and self-deception of MAGA electors is second only to Trump's.
And they are as angry as Trump. Like Trump, they are seeking revenge — in both the impeachment cases and the 91 charges the former president faces. They are angry that their idol may be held accountable for trying to steal the 2020 presidential elections in Washington, D.C. and Georgia, for allegedly removing classified documents and hiding them at Mar-a-Lago, and for allegedly paying secret money to someone. Porn star. Like Trump, they are angry about the $355 million judgment against him for lying to lenders and New York tax officials about the value of his assets. And don't even get them started on the $83 million he owed E. Jean Carroll after he put his fingers in her vagina and called her a liar when she talked about the assault.
I don't think MAGA Republicans would put it that way, but they are desperate to find some way to convince Americans that Joe Biden is just as corrupt as Donald Trump.
Of course they can't.
And so, like the dismembered Black Knight in the iconic fight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, they comically cling to their mortally wounded isolation scheme, saying: “That's just a scratch!”
@robinkapkarian
