'You knew': Dem lawmaker shreds GOP leaders' 'straw man' denials about arrested informant

With a central informant who provided evidence backing the Biden impeachment investigation arrested for lying to the FBI, House Republicans are scrambling to justify their ongoing probe. The House Oversight Committee, led by Rep. James Comer (R-KY), put out a statement on Friday evening distancing itself from any claims that the informant, Alexander Smirnov, had made.

"We can clear this up for you," wrote the Committee's official X account in a reply to criticism from Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY). "1) We never knew the informant's name 2) We never talked to the informant 3) The FBI never gave us his name and redacted the FD-1023 because they said he was so important to an ongoing investigation 4) The FBI told the committee, including Democrats, the informant was highly credible; No one is falling for this Russia Hoax 2.0 you're peddling."

It didn't take long for Goldman, a Democratic Oversight member who previously served as the attorney prosecuting the first of former President Donald Trump's impeachments, to clap back.

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"These are straw man responses. The question is whether @RepJamesComer, @Jim_Jordan or @ChuckGrassley knew that this bogus allegation first peddled by Giuliani in 2019 (and then disproved in Trump Impeachment 1.0) was being pushed by Russian intelligence," wrote Goldman. "The FBI actually told you that Smirnov had been credible in the past but they could not verify his Burisma allegations made in 2020 — the same year that Grassley, Johnson and Giuliani were peddling this bogus theory while receiving info from a different Russian agent."

"It gets worse: You KNEW the allegations were false," he continued. "You knew from Impeachment 1.0 AND you knew because the Burisma founder, the alleged source of Smirnov’s info, said the exact opposite in 2019 — which I pointed out to you in Cmte hearings. So, what else did you know?"

The impeachment Goldman presided over tread much of this ground already; in that case, Trump was charged with abuse of power for threeatening to revoke Ukrainian weapons shipments to push that country's president to announce an investigation into the Biden', based along the same debunked claims that they accepted bribes from the Ukrainian firm Burisma.