Seems to be like Republicans’ star Biden impeachment witness is a liar. Who noticed that coming?
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I’ve to marvel if Republicans who stay to serve Donald Trump, like those within the U.S. Home of Representatives trying their darndest to impeach President Joe Biden, ever get sick of sprinting head first into brick partitions.
We realized Thursday that one of many key cogs within the Home impeachment inquiry of the president – the supply of among the largest allegations in opposition to Biden – has been charged by the Justice Department on, to make use of authorized parlance, making up a bunch of crap.
The supply’s identify is Alexander Smirnov, a 43-year-old FBI informant. For these not intimately conversant in the appropriate wing’s expanded Hunter Biden universe, Smirnov’s the supply on the coronary heart of an FBI doc, known as an FD-1023, that Fox Information and congressional Republicans declared was proof-positive that Biden and his son had been enmeshed in a Ukrainian bribery scheme whereas Biden was nonetheless vice chairman.
The Biden impeachment bombshell that wasn’t
To present you a style of the near-orgasmic MAGA-ville response to the preliminary launch of this “bombshell” FBI doc final 12 months, think about this quote from Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York to Fox News: “That is the largest political corruption scandal, not solely in my lifetime, however I might say the previous 100 years.”
Yeah, Elise, about that.
In 2020, after Biden grew to become a presidential candidate, the informant told his FBI handler an elaborate story. He alleged that in 2015 and 2016, he met with executives from the Ukrainian power firm Hunter Biden labored for, Burisma, and that they informed him about $5 million bribes paid to the youthful Biden and then-Vice President Biden.
These alleged – and now obviously made-up – bribes had been to get the elder Biden to cope with a Ukrainian prosecutor, or some such nonsense.
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Anyway, seems it’s all a load of hooey, which rational individuals who learn issues knew from the soar, as a result of there was actually zero proof backing up the informant’s claims.
And if there had been, Trump’s DOJ would’ve been on it like a bear on a freeway honey spill.
Allegations underpinning GOP impeachment inquiry go poof
According to the indictment, “The occasions the Defendant first reported to the Handler in June 2020 had been fabrications,” and Smirnov’s earliest contact with Burisma executives was in 2017, after Biden had left workplace.
It additionally seems Smirnov didn’t like Biden and routinely slammed him in messages to his handler.
Per the indictment: “Briefly, the Defendant remodeled his routine and unextraordinary enterprise contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations in opposition to Public Official 1, the presumptive nominee of one of many two main political events for President, after expressing bias in opposition to Public Official 1 and his candidacy.”
A lot for the ‘Biden crime household’ lore
I’d be remiss to not look at among the different excited Republican reactions to those now debunked claims:
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And good ol’ Sean Hannity on Fox Information, on the evening the FD-1023 doc was launched, mentioned Biden is “compromised” and has been “very credibly accused of public corruption on a scale this nation has by no means seen earlier than.”
Media Matters for America reported that Hannity did 85 segments on his present in 2023 centered round these allegations.
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Issues simply aren’t going nice for the Home GOP’s impeachment plans
House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has already tripped over his personal silly time and time once more together with his limp try to impeach Biden.
Star witness after star witness has wound up saying underneath oath the alternative of what Republicans need them to say.
Take this current testimony, reported by The Washington Post, from Eric Schwerin, a former enterprise affiliate of Hunter Biden: “I’m not conscious of any monetary transactions or compensation that Vice President Biden acquired associated to enterprise performed by any of his relations or their associates nor any involvement by him of their companies. None.”
Ouch.
Thursday’s indictment of the GOP’s lynchpin supply – which got here through the special counsel who is investigating and has charged Hunter Biden – would, in any affordable world, be the tip of Comer and the Keystone-Kop Republicans’ impeachment campaign.
However we don’t, after all, stay in an inexpensive world. We stay in a single the place loyal Republican lawmakers bow their heads to Trump then relish the possibility to run straight into brick partitions – concussions, embarrassment and failure be damned.
Observe USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, previously Twitter, @RexHuppke and Fb facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
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This text initially appeared on USA TODAY: GOP Biden impeachment witness charged for lying about Hunter. Shocker!
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