Exposure of Kremlin lies won’t alter course of impeachment

A key witness in the impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden had been caught trafficking in lies originating from the Kremlin, but that’s not going to stop the Republicans from moving forward. There is no there there, but there never had to be, because “there” doesn’t matter. They are picking up where Donald Trump left off when he extorted Ukraine’s president. The problem is the Republicans are bad at this.

Longtime FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, told the FBI that Joe Biden and his son were at the heart of a bribery scheme involving Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm that Hunter Biden worked for. Smirnov told this lie after meeting with Russian intelligence officials who are close to Vladimir Putin. According to CBS News’ Scott MacFarlane, “prosecutors claim Smirnov had contact with Russian foreign agents, including one described as a Russian official ‘who controls groups that are engaged in overseas assassination efforts.’”

After his arrest this week, Smirnov said the lie he told the FBI came from Russian intelligence officials. MacFarlane: “The special counsel argues Smirnov’s contacts are ‘extensive and extremely recent,’ and that he’s a risk to peddle Russia’s lies in an attempt to interfere in the 2024 election and dissuade congressional support of Ukraine aid.”

This lie, the one about the Bidens taking bribes, is the basis of the inquiry, which is the last stage before an impeachment. Politico’s Jonathan Lamire said after prosecutors revealed Smirnov’s connection to the Kremlin, House Republicans know their case is falling apart.

“White House staffers … received subpoena letters this week saying you have to come and testify … One staffer told me he received a letter and 90 minutes later received a second that said, 'Hey, disregard the first, use this one instead.' He said, 'What is the difference between the two? All the references to Smirnov in the first letter had been stripped out,’ and now they were going forward without it. That's their acknowledgment, the Republicans know it's falling apart."

Even so, they won’t stop. Remember, there’s no there there. What matters is smearing Biden before the election, the way Donald Trump tried smearing him before the last one. But as I said, the problem is the House Republicans are bad at this. Like their leader, they can’t adjust to changing conditions. They do the same thing no matter what. When things go sideways, they don’t double-check. They double down.

Take Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and co-leader of the House impeachment inquiry. On Fox, he said the news doesn’t change that Biden went “to Kyiv and fires the prosecutor and he does so by leveraging, conditioning the release of our tax money on the firing of the prosecutor, applying pressure to the company his son sat on the board of and made a million dollars a year from.”

Jordan called this word-salad one of “four facts” that are, apparently, the new and improved foundation for the GOP’s impeachment inquiry. It is not a fact, however. Indeed, Jordan is backing away from one Kremlin lie – the one about the Bidens taking bribes – into another.

As vice president, Joe Biden did pressure the Ukrainian government to fire its top prosecutor, but not because Viktor Shokin was investigating corruption at the energy firm that Hunter Biden worked for. Biden pressured the government to fire Shokin because he wasn’t investigating enough. He was dirty. He was among Putin’s circle of corrupt foreign officials. Biden was speaking for the global community. The “leverage” Jordan speaks of was part of an anti-corruption effort.

This lie, about Biden’s saving Burisma from criminal investigation, has been around since at least 2019, when then-President Donald Trump attempted to extort Ukraine’s president. In exchange for the release of vital military aid, Trump asked Volodymyr Zelensky to announce that his government would investigate Biden’s “meddling.” Trump had believed, rightly, it turns out, that Biden would be his Democratic challenger in 2020. For all this, he was impeached the first time.

The thing about this lie, about Biden saving Burisma from criminal investigation, is that Trump isn’t its source. The Kremlin is. It’s part of a larger package of lies, to wit: Not only did Biden corrupt US foreign policy for his son’s benefit, it was Ukraine, not Russia, that sabotaged the 2016 presidential election. Moreover: Trump didn’t collude with Russia. Hillary Clinton colluded with Ukraine. Trump was the victim. And all he wanted from Zelensky was help in uncovering the truth.

Before the 2020 election, a Republican-led Senate committee released an exhaustive report showing that Biden did nothing wrong. According to a supplemental report to it, this package of lies is rooted “in Russian disinformation efforts – that Ukraine and not Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election, and that Hunter Biden’s connection with Ukrainian energy company Burisma influenced former Vice President Biden’s actions and US foreign policy. These types of theories were used by Russian intelligence to obscure their interference in the 2016 election, as well as by Republicans to defend President Trump during impeachment proceedings, despite having no basis in fact.”

This is what I mean when I said Jim Jordan backed away from one lie, the one about the Bidens taking bribes, into another, the one about Biden saving Burisma from criminal investigation. And this is what I mean when I said the House Republicans are bad at this. When one impeachment rationale melts into the air, they turn to another, which in turn melts into the air. They don’t adjust, though. They don’t double-check. They double down. What matters is picking up where Trump left off in 2019, smearing Joe Biden before an election, even if that means ensuring the appearance of being Putin’s apparatchiks.