House Republicans leading the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden tried to downplay the importance of an FBI informant whose claims they once championed after he was charged with fabricating foreign bribery allegations involving the president and his son.
Special counsel David Weiss charged the FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, with lying to the FBI and creating false records. According to the indictment, Smirnov “fabricated” a story about a Ukrainian oligarch paying millions of dollars in bribes to the Bidens – allegations that Republicans have made central to their impeachment inquiry into Biden.
The informant’s uncorroborated – and now fully discredited – claims were memorialized in an internal FBI memo that Republicans fought for months to obtain from the FBI and eventually made public in July over the bureau’s objections.
The downplaying of the bombshell charges undermine how Republicans have previously championed the discredited allegations as part of their investigation struggling to uncover wrongdoing by the president.
While a spokesman for House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan told CNN “nothing has changed” in the wake of the charges, Jordan said on Fox last month “the most corroborating evidence we have is that 1023 form from this highly credible confidential human source.”
House Oversight Chair James Comer said his work is “not reliant” on the now-debunked allegations and pointed to a “large record of evidence,” but when Republicans were fighting to publicize the document that memorialized these claims, Comer said on Fox in May 2023 “this is a very crucial piece of our investigation.”
And House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith, who is leading the inquiry with Jordan and Comer, said the allegations were a “smoking…
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