It’s official: the MAGA House Republican effort to impeach President Biden is cooked. After it became public last week that they spent the past year pushing a Russian disinformation campaign to smear President Biden and his family in order to help Donald Trump, it remains that MAGA House Republicans have failed to find a single shred of evidence against President Biden. The arrest of Republicans’ star witness Alexander Smirnov for lying about his claims regarding President Biden and his son, that was based on Russian disinformation, is the final nail in the coffin for this partisan political stunt.
This investigation was dead in the water long before Smirnov’s indictment was made public. MAGA Republicans ignored the evidence pointing to his lack of credibility, including the findings of a Trump-era FBI investigation that failed to substantiate any of his claims. And on top of that, in interview-after-interview over the past year, James Comer hyped every new “witness’” testimony as a bombshell, only to have each witness flop without any evidence of wrongdoing by the President. It is clear to everyone that their impeachment stunt is finished. And while MAGA Republicans waste time and taxpayer dollars on harmful impeachment charades that threaten our democratic norms, the country hurdles towards an impending government shutdown. James Comer and MAGA House Republicans have spent far too long acting as Putin and Trump’s puppets while ignoring the important issues facing our country.
MAGA House Republicans centered their impeachment inquiry against President Biden on criminal lies fed by Russian intelligence. On. Feb. 15, a federal court unsealed a two-count indictment of Oversight Chair James Comer’s star witness, Alexander Smirnov, for making false statements accusing President Biden and his son Hunter of corruption and bribery – exposing the debunked, criminal lie at the center of Comer’s baseless impeachment inquiry. Not only was he indicted for lying about President Biden and his family, he was also exposed for meeting with and being fed information by Russian intelligence officials. Smirnov was the key informant behind an FBI Form FD-1023 dating back to 2020 that documented his secondhand account of a conversation between officials at Ukrainian energy company Burisma that supposedly implicated Joe Biden.
Comer blatantly ignored evidence that Smirnov’s allegations were not credible. Even though the allegations were reviewed and debunked by a Trump-era investigation, Burisma’s former CEO, and independent fact-checkers, Smirnov’s criminal lies served as the basis for Comer’s probe as early as May 2023, with Comer spending nearly a year praising Smirnov as one of the FBI’s “most respected,” “most effective,” “most credible,” “most trusted, highest paid,” informants. In October, witness testimony by U.S. attorney Scott Brady revealed that the Trump-era FBI spent eight months exhaustively assessing the allegations detailed in the Form FD-1023 only to close the case after finding insufficient evidence to warrant escalating the allegations to a preliminary or full investigation. This determination was made after the agency gathered information from forty confidential sources – even as the investigator freely admitted that he failed to assess Smirnov’s credibility. Yet Comer disregarded the mounting evidence against his key source, and continued to hype Smirnov’s criminal lies.
Even though Comer swore up and down that Smirnov was credible, as soon as Smirnov’s indictment and Russian ties were exposed, however, Comer started scrambling to sweep it all under the rug, “he wasn’t an important part of this investigation because I didn’t even know who he was.”
After over a year investigating, Comer and his MAGA allies have found no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden. Despite interviewing over a dozen witnesses as part of the probe, not even a shred of evidence to support their baseless impeachment inquiry has emerged. Comer has repeatedly made lofty claims that these interviews would turn up evidence of wrongdoing but instead each and every one exposed Comer’s penchant for spreading lies and misinformation in order to further the MAGA agenda instead of pursuing the truth. See the timeline for yourself:
- February 2024: House Republicans interviewed four witnesses, including convicted felon Jason Galanis, foreign businessman Karen Tramontano, Hunter Biden’s ex-associate with close ties to Trump Tony Bobulinski, and James Biden’s former business associate Joseph “Joey” Langston – none of whom provided evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden.
- January 2024: House Republicans interviewed five friends and business associates connected to the Biden family, including longtime Biden family bookkeeper Eric Schwerin, Hunter Biden’s longtime business associates Rob Walker and Mervyn Yan, Hunter’s close friend Kevin Morris, and art dealer George Berges. All five testified that President Biden was not involved in his family’s business affairs.
- December 2023: House Republicans interviewed a business contact of James Biden, Carol Fox, who testified that she possessed no knowledge that President Biden was directly involved in any business dealings involving his brother.
- October 2023: House Republicans interviewed two U.S. attorneys, Scott Brady and Martin Estrada, who debunked Republicans’ bogus bribery allegations and testified that the DOJ was fairly and honestly prosecuting Hunter Biden.
- September 2023: During House Republicans’ first and only impeachment hearing, two of their three so-called fact witnesses (conservative legal scholar Jonathan Turley and forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky) testified that there is no evidence to support impeachment. Prior to the hearing, three FBI investigators and two IRS criminal investigators debunked Republicans false claims about the DOJ’s Hunter Biden investigation.
- July 2023: House Republicans interviewed so-called star witness Devon Archer, a former business associate of Hunter Biden who testified that President Biden had no involvement in Hunter’s business interests and never discussed any business with his associates. That same month, House Republicans’ two key whistleblowers, former IRS agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, also testified under oath that neither President Biden nor his Attorney General interfered in DOJ investigations into Hunter Biden – as did an unidentified FBI agent.
Even House Republicans know their impeachment probe is finished. Comer is steadily walking back his loft impeachment claims as his investigation wanes on. In December, Comer began claiming his job “was never to impeach” – even though he was planning politically-motivated investigations before the 2022 midterm election results even rolled in. By January, Republicans began expressing doubt about Comer’s impeachment inquiry, and on Feb. 15, Comer admitted that the House GOP may not actually have the votes to proceed with impeachment, reportedly saying that he “may not hold an impeachment vote after all,” because, “the math keeps getting worse.”
- Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO): “There is no evidence that Joe Biden received money. When Sen. Johnson talks about the Biden crime family and talks about the don of the Biden crime family, you have to have evidence.”
- Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE): “[Comer has] not shown that a specific law was violated by the President as of yet.”
- Anonymous House Republican: “I don’t see it going anywhere substantive.”
- Anon. House Republican: “I don’t think it’ll go to the floor. There are too many Republicans who will tell the speaker it won’t pass.”
- Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA): “I think that you’ve got an extraordinary amount of groundwork that would have to be laid that is not there right now.”
- Anon. House Republican: “It’s been a parade of embarrassments.”
- Anon. source close to House GOP leadership: “I don’t know how Republicans actually impeach the president based on [Comer’s] clueless investigation and lack of leadership.”
- Senior House GOP aide: “It was a disaster. They looked like buffoons…They have stumbled with high profile information that wasn’t what it was promised.”
- Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX): “I doubt it would get through the House.”