Congressional Republicans were at a federal prison in Alabama on Friday to interview  a former business associate of Hunter Biden as part of their impeachment investigation into alleged influence peddling and corruption involving the Biden family. 

Republican investigators from the House Oversight and Judiciary committees are set to interview a member of the Galanis crime family, Jason Galanis, at an Alabama prison, multiple press organizations report. 

Galanis, who was a business partner of the president’s son, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, securities fraud, and investment advisor fraud, as well as other charges, and was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2017. In 2004, Forbes declared Galanis “porn’s new king” after he purchased the biggest payment processor for internet pornography.

Galanis’s father, John Peter Galanis, is one of the most notorious white collar criminals of the 1980s. He is serving a 10-year prison sentence for the same securities fraud scheme that ensnared his son.

According to Fox News, the Oversight Committee chairman, James Comer, says he is hoping to obtain information from Jason Galanis relating to a Wall Street Journal report that “discusses the allegation of the ‘access’ Hunter Biden could provide while his father was vice president, with Mr. Galanis writing in 2014 that Hunter ‘will change your access forever.’” 

Another former business partner of the president’s son, Devon Archer, who was also close friends with Hunter, was involved in a separate scheme with Galanis in which prosecutors say they defrauded a Native American tribe in South Dakota. Archer was sentenced to just more than a year in prison. His conviction has been thrown out, then reinstated, and continues to make its way through the courts.

Archer testified before House investigators last summer, and described how Hunter Biden would sometimes call his father, who was serving as vice president at the time, and put him on speakerphone while in meetings with foreign business partners in order to sell the “illusion of access” to his father. 

When asked during his testimony, “Are you aware of any wrongdoing by Vice President Biden?” Archer responded, “No, I’m not aware of any,” according to a transcript of his testimony.

Archer also said he was not aware of any actual policy actions taken by President Biden during the Obama administration, but said Hunter’s foreign business partners paid handsomely for what they thought was access to his father.

The news that GOP investigators will travel to the prison to interview Galanis comes shortly after the special counsel investigating Hunter Biden, David Weiss, charged a longtime FBI source with lying when he told the FBI that Joe and Hunter Biden took millions of dollars in bribes from Ukrainian business interests. 

Alexander Smirnov, who was a “confidential human source” for the FBI for many years, was arrested in Nevada for “creating a false and fictitious record” in statements made on a FBI 1023 form — the same form Speaker McCarthy referenced as a key reason for impeachment.

In a filing in his case, the Department of Justice also disclosed that “Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1,” in reference to the story Mr. Smirnov is alleged to have created about Hunter Biden and his father.

Mr. Smirnov has not yet entered a plea. However, he was re-arrested, again in Nevada, under a warrant for the same offense on Thursday, after having been released pre-trial beforehand.

The ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Jamie Raskin, said in a statement that Mr. Smirnov’s arrest renders the entire impeachment process defunct. 

“It appears like the whole thing is not only, obviously, false and fraudulent, but a product of Russian disinformation and propaganda,” Mr. Raskin told reporters earlier this week. “And that’s been the motor force behind this investigation for more than a year.”

House Republicans maintain that Mr. Smirnov’s admission has no effect on their investigation, which continued this week when the president’s brother, James Biden, testified in a closed-door session with impeachment investigators. Hunter Biden himself will testify next week.