Republicans Vow To Push on With Impeachment After FBI Informant Who Said Bidens Took Bribes Is Charged With Lying, Linked to Russians

House Republicans are vowing to press forward with their impeachment investigation into President Biden despite the arrest of an FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, whom Special Counsel David Weiss has charged with lying when he told his handlers that the president and his son, Hunter, each took a $5 million bribe from a Ukrainian businessman.Mr. Smirnov appeared in a Las Vegas courtroom on Tuesday and, over the government’s objections, was released prior to trial on condition that he submit to electronic monitoring and surrender his U.S. and Israeli passports. On Wednesday, Mr. Weiss’s office asked a California judge to throw Mr. Smirnov back in jail. Special Counsel David Weiss’s office also said in a court filing on Tuesday that Mr. Smirnov admitted on the day of his arrest that the bribe story was actually first pitched to him by Russian intelligence officers. “During his custodial interview on February 14, Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden. The mention of Russia with regard to Hunter Biden recalls the now-discredited letter from October 2020, signed by more than 50 former American intelligence officials, that claimed the incriminating and embarrassing information found on the first son’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The laptop’s contents, of course, were later verified by the FBI and also by major press organizations.In seeking to have Mr. Smirnov detained, Mr. Weiss’s office claimed his ties to Russia could afford him means to flee the U.S.“These contacts are extensive and extremely recent, and Smirnov had the intention of meeting with one of these officials on his upcoming planned overseas travel,” the prosecution writes. Mr. Smirnov has described his Russian contacts as “the son of a former high-ranking Russian government official … who purportedly controls two groups of individuals tasked with carrying out assassination efforts in a third-party country.” Another official is described as a “Russian representative to another country,” and a third contact is “someone with ties to a particular Russian intelligence service.”According to the court filing, Mr. Smirnov was invited to a yacht trip hosted by a Russian steel oligarch and was offered the opportunity to meet with “high-ranking” members of the Russian intelligence community and other government agencies. Despite these disclosures, Republicans are continuing their investigation — saying that it is the fault of the FBI for propping up Mr. Smirnov as a “credible” witness to the Bidens’ alleged corruption. Republicans say that they have many other witnesses with different and evidence of corruption involving the Biden family.On Wednesday, as the president’s brother James, headed into a deposition with one of these witnesses, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Congressman Jim Jordan, said Mr. Smirnov’s predicament, and his ties to Russia, have no bearing on the impeachment inquiry. “This is a guy I think they’ve paid since 2010,” Mr. Jordan said. “It doesn’t change the fundamental facts” about Biden family corruption, he said. Mr. Smirnov had been an FBI informant for more than a decade before he made the bribery accusations in 2020. Previously, Mr. Jordan had described Mr. Smirnov’s allegations as the “most corroborating evidence we have.”The House Oversight Committee, which is leading the impeachment investigation, said in a statement on Wednesday that the onus is on the FBI to answer questions about why it described Mr. Smirnov as “highly credible” just a few months ago when it was actually investigating him for lying. The form that contained his bribery allegations, an FD-1023 form, first came into the possession of Senator Grassley, who at the time touted the FBI assertion that Mr. Smirnov was credible. “The DOJ and FBI have a lot of explaining to do about their reliance on the informant whose allegations were included in the FBI-generated FD-1023,” the Oversight Committee said in a statement. “Why did they use this informant, who officials claimed was highly credible, since 2010? Why did they pay the informant six figures? Why did the DOJ sit on serious allegations from the informant whom the FBI deemed highly credible for years before investigating the claims?”The top Democrat on the committee, Congressman Jamie Raskin, says the impeachment probe is now officially dead following the disclosures about Mr. Smirnov’s intelligence ties. “The impeachment investigation essentially ended yesterday — in substance if not in form — with the explosive revelation that Mr. Smirnov’s allegations about Ukrainian Burisma payments to Joe Biden were concocted along with Russian intelligence agents, and it appears like the whole thing is not only false and fraudulent, but a product of Russian disinformation and propaganda,” Mr. Raskin told reporters Wednesday. That allegation has “been the motor force behind this investigation for more than a year,” he continued.

Republicans Vow To Push on With Impeachment After FBI Informant Who Said Bidens Took Bribes Is Charged With Lying, Linked to Russians

Republicans Vow To Push on With Impeachment After FBI Informant Who Said Bidens Took Bribes Is Charged With Lying, Linked to Russians

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