House Republicans' efforts to impeach President Joe Biden have essentially been derailed by the FBI's arrest of an informant who was central to their allegations, conservative commentator Charlie Sykes said on MSNBC on Friday.
The former informant, Alexander Smirnov, reportedly told the FBI that Biden, when he was the vice president, along with his son Hunter, accepted millions of dollars in bribes from executives at the Ukrainian manufacturing conglomerate Burisma to remove a key prosecutor who would investigate them. This turned out to be a lie, and this week, a grand jury indicted Smirnov for making false statements to the FBI.
"Charlie, you want to be surprised and yet not at all surprised, right?" asked anchor Alicia Menendez.
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"No, not at all surprised," said Sykes. "But it is a spectacular pratfall for the Republicans. It's hard to overstate how much they had banked on this one informant who turns out to be bogus."
This was more than just an important witness for Republicans for their allegations that Biden and his family laundered bribes and struck corrupt deals, Sykes added — it pretty much was their case. The GOP's impeachment effort has largely been criticized for moving forward despite only providing snippets of witness interviews and not clearly stating which high crimes and misdemeanors they are accusing Biden of committing.
"It's hard to overstate how much Fox News ran with this particular story, or how central this was to the entire impeachment effort against Joe Biden," he continued. "And to have it blow up this dramatically, is pretty spectacular. Not surprising in a busy week."
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