Yesterday:

DAMAGE CONTROL
Republicans Are Scrambling to Salvage Their Doomed Biden Impeachment Push
The party’s star witness was charged last week with making everything up. The DOJ added on Tuesday that he admitted Russia was feeding him info
BY JEREMY CHILDS
FEBRUARY 21, 2024

[….]

THE DEPARTMENT OF Justice has charged a former FBI informant — whose claims Republicans used to bolster allegations of a corrupt bribery scheme involving Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma — with two counts of making false statements to federal authorities.

The indictment, announced Thursday by Special Counsel David Weiss, alleges that Alexander Smirnov “falsely claimed” that during two business meetings in 2015 and/or 2016 “executives associated with Burisma, admitted to him that they hired [Hunter Biden] to ‘protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.’”

Smirnov added that the Burisma officials also said they had paid “$5 million each” to Joe and Hunter Biden, so that the then vice president’s son would “‘take care of all those issues through his dad’ referring to a criminal investigation being conducted by the then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General into Burisma.”

The indictment alleges that “the events that Smirnov first reported to the FBI Agent in June 2020 were fabrications. In truth and fact, the defendant had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the administration when [Joe Biden] had no ability to influence U.S. policy and after the Ukrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016.” The DOJ claims that Smirnov “transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations,” after expressing bias against Joe Biden’s candidacy for the presidency in 2020.

[….]

And:

A now-indicted FBI informant was at the ‘heart’ of the GOP’s case against Joe Biden
After the indictment of the source of false allegations against the president and Hunter Biden, Republicans are downplaying the extent to which they relied upon the claims.
[….]
House Republicans even threatened to hold the director of the FBI in contempt last year to force the bureau to show them the underlying documents, which were eventually released, sparking breathless headlines in conservative media outlets about the false allegations that Biden and his son Hunter were paid $5 million in bribes.

Just weeks ago, one of the leaders of the impeachment inquiry even pointed to Smirnov’s alleged lies to the FBI as their strongest evidence.

“That to me is really the heart of this matter,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio — a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump and one of the architects of the impeachment push — said in a Jan. 11 appearance on Fox News, referring to the FBI FD-1023 confidential human source form containing false allegations from the now-indicted former FBI informant. “The most corroborating evidence we have is the 1023 form from this highly credible confidential human source.”

Now, after the source of those allegations has been federally charged, House Republicans say that it wasn’t the “heart” of their inquiry after all.
[….]

Useful idiots.

Last August:

[….]
Mark Alford (r): “Well, let me tell you what’s going on and, and a little about how this works. Um, so as soon as we took power in Congress, uh, in early January, and even before that, early, the formation of these committees started. So, Judiciary, which is run by Jim Jordan, you know him, and then our Oversight committee run by James Comer, uh, both men of integrity, both Christians, and both trying to find the truth in all this. They have been digging, and digging, and digging. This is why you see these bank records that have come out now that have linked directly twenty million dollars at a minimum in illegal payments that have come from, uh, oligarchs in Russia, Ukraine, and some from China, an adversarial nation, that have gone to the Biden crime family. And so, as this is coming up, as they are interviewing more people it does take time. I know the American people, on you and I, are frustrated. And that’s why I pushed [House Speaker] Kevin McCarthy last week when I talked to him. I said, we’ve got to have an impeachment inquiry when we get back.”

Question: “And please make it where we can watch it.” [voice: “Um, hm.”]

Mark Alford (r): “It will be where you can watch it. I guarantee you that. Um, here, here’s the difference though, all right, I, let’s go back a couple years when the Democrats were, had their knives out for Trump and impeached him twice, right, on, on, stupid things that he should never have been impeached on. And yet the Democrats because they were in power and they controlled the House and the Senate, uh, they were able to do that. Um, they didn’t get a conviction in the Senate, so it was really control in the House. But my point is, is that, um, they made a mockery [“They did.”] out of the jud…, out of the impeachment process. We cannot, you know, I know that Republicans are always like the nice guys. But we’ve got to protect our republic. [voice: “Yes.”] And part of that protecting our republic is defending the Constitution. [voice: “Yes.”] And part of defending the Constitution is doing it the right way. [“it is.”] Congress has two big powers, to declare war, and to impeach. And if we don’t do it in the right way we’re not gonna get Democrats on board with us to see the truth and admit the truth. And to convict in the Senate. And we’re going to do, do a disservice to our future generations by continuing to make a mockery out of impeachment [inaudible]. Now we’re, we’re gonna have an impeachment inquiry. I’m ninety-nine percent sure of that. um, it, but it may take a while to get it done. There’s still new evidence that’s coming out. Uh, every day they’re interviewing someone new. They subpoenaed the IRS agents, the investigators who’ve looked into this. And they’re going to make them talk on Capitol hill.”
[….]

It’s a clown show.

Previously:

Mark Alford (r) – Town Hall – Warrensburg, Missouri – August 31, 2023 – a self-sustaining information feedback loop (September 3, 2023)