Indictment of FBI informant could spell trouble for key GOP impeachment claim

The GOP was dealt a blow in its effort to impeach President Biden after a former FBI informant was arrested on charges that he simply made up the bribery allegations that have become central to the case.

Alexander Smirnov was arrested at the airport upon entering the country and charged with making false statements, including that then-Vice President Biden and his son each accepted a $5 million bribe.

The Thursday indictment pierces the bribery claim, alleging Smirnov fabricated the whole story because of his opposition to President Biden’s candidacy. 

GOP investigations have put the bribery allegations front and center of the impeachment push, and Republican leaders have pointed to the claims to convince colleagues to back the investigation.

“The impeachable offense is — I think, the key thing is in Burisma,” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told reporters in December ahead of a House vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry. 

And House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) last year called the tip “a very crucial piece of our investigation.”

Democrats are now delighting in the revelation — and what it means for the GOP inquiry.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the Oversight panel, said the information in the indictment is so damaging that Republicans should simply call off their impeachment inquiry.

“The Republicans on the Senate side in 2020 did their own investigation and said they couldn’t find anything to it. So we’re not that surprised that this has happened, but it is an amazing turn of events. And I do think it’s an opportunity for a reset on the Republican side,” Raskin said during a conversation with Chris Hayes on MSNBC.

“This really is the heart of it. I think it’s an opportunity for them to say, ‘You know what, we gave it our best shot, but we’re gonna give up the ghost. There’s nothing there.’”

Comer, however, is defending his probe, saying Thursday that the investigation has interests well beyond the bribery component.

“The impeachment inquiry is not reliant on the FBI’s FD-1023,” he said, referring to the form used to document conversations with informants.

“It is based on a large record of evidence, including bank records and witness testimony, revealing that Joe Biden knew of and participated in his family’s business dealings.”

Smirnov relayed to the FBI a conversation he allegedly had with Mykola Zlochevsky, who ran Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company Hunter Biden served on the board of.

According to Smirnov, Zlochevsky said he paid father and son $5 million each in an effort to avoid scrutiny of his company. It’s a detail Zlochevsky would later appear to refute in information supplied to Congress during Trump’s impeachment through an exchange captured with Vitaly Pruss, an associate of Rudy Giuliani. 

Republicans have sought to connect that to Biden’s action as vice president to oust the Ukrainian state prosecutor, who was accused by the international community of failing to address corruption.

Then-Vice President Biden conditioned a $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine on the firing of state prosecutor Viktor Shokin. The GOP argues that benefited Burisma and by extension Hunter Biden, a largely disproven claim, given that a prior investigation into Burisma had gone dormant, and changing prosecutors risks further scrutiny.

While Smirnov had been an FBI informant for years, he did not mention the alleged call in 2017, instead raising the detail in 2020.

“The indictment alleges that the defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against Public Official 1 after expressing bias against Public Official 1 and his presidential candidacy,” the Justice Department wrote in a press release announcing Smirnov’s arrest.

“The events the Defendant first reported to the Handler in June 2020 were fabrications. In truth and fact, the Defendant had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016, in other words, when Public Official 1 had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office.” 

Smirnov faces charges both for making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison. 

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), a member of the House Oversight Committee, described the allegations from Smirnov as the “birth of this whole fake impeachment.”

“Thoughts and prayers to James Comer and the fake, frivolous, faux Biden impeachment that they’ve been trying to run. … Now what do we find out? What we’ve known all along, that this 1023 form that they cried over for months and months was all a lie. It was all a lie. And the guy who made it up has been indicted.”

The GOP fixation on the bribery allegations was a pathway that also came with pitfalls, as it added pressure on the party to back allegations that have been swirling for years and have been scrutinized and debunked by fact-checkers.

Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) acknowledged ahead of the GOP’s impeachment vote last year that it would be tough to prove the bribery allegations, saying the party would instead have to point to broader claims of influence peddling to make its case.

“The political problem we have is that politically, it would be very nice if you had what everybody calls the smoking gun. The reality is, in a lot of these large-scale cases, there never is. There’s a totality of evidence and a totality of circumstances that says there is no rational explanation for all of it,” Armstrong told The Hill. 

But it’s been tricky for Republicans to connect the business activities of Hunter Biden with anything President Biden did while in office. 

Comer has sought to show that President Biden met with associates of his son, but he’s faced criticism from Raskin, who has said he’s yet to show any wrongdoing on the part of the president.

It’s those details that form the base of what Comer describes as an influence peddling operation by the Biden family, adding Thursday that “Joe Biden was the brand being sold by the Bidens around the world.”

“We will continue to follow the facts to propose legislation to reform federal ethics laws and to determine whether articles of impeachment are warranted,” Comer said.

The GOP has also raised other questions about revelations in the document, mainly why the FBI described Smirnov to lawmakers as a highly credible source.

The Oversight Committee on Friday shared a clip of Raskin confirming that description in summer 2023.

And the indictment raises questions about the FBI’s continued reliance on the source, given “repeated admonishments that he must provide truthful information to the FBI.”

“The FBI’s actions in this matter are very concerning,” Comer said Thursday. “The FBI had this form for years and it appears they did nothing to verify the troubling claims contained within the record until Congress became aware of and demanded access to them.”

But Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said the overall picture painted by the indictment is so damaging that Jordan and Comer should apologize to Biden

“It’s hard to fathom what a spectacular failure this Comer/Jordan impeachment is,” he tweeted.