The Department of Justice bringing two counts of lying to the FBI against the informant who accused Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden of corruption is the latest bad news in what’s been a bad year for congressional Republicans. That informant’s claims, which DOJ says were false, was the linchpin for House Republicans’ crusade against President Biden. That witness was key to Republicans’ plan to impeach President Joe Biden for the wrongdoing they’ve imagined.
Rather than hurt Biden, House Republicans have more often than not found that having the power to lead investigations has backfired on them tremendously. Alexander Smirnov, who’s now been charged with lying to the FBI, was charged by the same special counsel that Republicans insisted be appointed to investigate the president and his family.
House Republicans have more often than not found that having the power to lead investigations has backfired on them tremendously.
Much of the GOP’s extremely flimsy case against President Biden revolved around whether he, while vice president, profited illegally from his son’s business deals. While Hunter Biden’s role as a board member for a Ukrainian gas company during that time led to conspiracy theories that his father traded policy favors for his son’s financial gain, the president has maintained that he did not mix his public duties with his private life. Smirnov, though, had claimed the Bidens had been paid $5 million each to protect Burisma from prosecution.
His claims were recorded on an FBI form known as a FD-1023, a record of whatever unsubstantiated claims someone has provided to the FBI. Such a form “does not validate the information, establish its credibility, or weigh it against other information known or developed by the FBI,” as the bureau’s congressional liaison explained in a letter to Republicans. But the idea that the FBI was keeping allegations of corruption against the president a secret became a major talking point from House…
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