The case against a longtime FBI agent who is accused of masterminding a multimillion dollar bribery plot involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden is not innovative, according to a top House GOP investigator.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) claims that the indictment of Alexander Smirnov and his claims of having contacts with Russian intelligence officials do not “change the four fundamental facts” that connect Joe Biden’s pressure on Ukrainian authorities to remove the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, during the elder Biden’s vice presidential term, with Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company that employed Hunter Biden as a board member for several years.
During an exchange with CNN’s Manu Raju, Jordan argued that “fact number one” is that Hunter Biden was “put on the board of Burisma and gets paid a million dollars a year.”
The second fact, in Jordan’s opinion, was that “he is unfit to serve on the board. In an interview, Hunter Biden made mention to the fact that his family name was a factor in his hiring.
Jordan stated that the third piece of information pertained to Burisma executives, who asked Hunter Biden, “Can you weigh in with D.C. and help us deal with the pressure we are facing from the prosecutor?”
Jordan cited the evidence of Devon Archer, who was also a board member of the corporation.
“Fact number four: Joe Biden then goes to Ukraine” days after a call was made and “conditions the release of… American tax money on the firing of the prosecutor who was applying the pressure” to Burisma, Jordan added.
Raju dug deeper, challenging Jordan on his earlier assertion that an FBI-generated FD-1023 form with Smirnov’s allegations that Burisma executives paid $5 million in bribes to the Bidens was the “most corroborating” evidence for GOP investigators in their impeachment investigation.
“It corroborates but it doesn’t change those fundamental facts,” Jordan said.
The Ohio Republican voiced similar worries to reporters during a separate meeting that took place outside of President Joe Biden’s brother James Biden’s deposition for the impeachment probe. Hunter Biden is expected to testify before congressional investigators next week.
Leading Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) stated on Tuesday that the impeachment probe “essentially ended… with the explosive revelation that Mr. Smirnov’s allegations about Ukrainian Burisma payments to Joe Biden were concocted along with Russian intelligence agents.”
He also exhorted House Republicans to “fold up the tent to this circus show.” This concludes it.
The House Oversight Committee, chaired by James Comer (R-KY), is in charge of the impeachment probe.
In the FD-1023 form, the committee said that the FBI and the Department of Justice “have a lot of explaining to do about their reliance on the informant whose allegations were included.”
In a post, X received three questions:
“Why did they use this informant, who officials claimed was highly credible, since 2010?”
“Why did they pay the informant six figures?”
“Why did the DOJ sit on serious allegations from the informant whom the FBI deemed highly credible for years before investigating the claims?”
The panel added, “The American people deserve answers.”
The U.S. House officially authorized its inquiry into President Joe Biden’s possible impeachment late last year.
The Republican-controlled Senate authorized the probe, which is investigating whether Biden unjustly profited from his 53-year-old son Hunter Biden’s overseas business transactions, by a party-line vote of 221-212. Earlier, Hunter Biden had turned down a request to testify in private.
“These are — these are serious times and this is a very serious matter. And I’ve said many times over the last few years because impeachment has been an issue that we’ve all become all too familiar with, that next to the Declaration of War, you can make an argument that impeachment may be the heaviest power that Congress holds. That — that constitutional responsibility lies with the House,” Johnson began at a press conference.
“We — we must pursue the facts where they lead. John Adams famously said ‘Facts are stubborn things.’ And you heard the recitation of that here this morning. These facts are alarming. They’re alarming to the American people, they are alarming to us. And so while we take no pleasure in the — in the proceedings here, we have a responsibility to do it. We’re very proud of the work of these three chairmen that you’ve seen here, Chairman Comer, and Jordan and Smith,” Johnson added.
He continued: “They’ve done an exceptional job of uncovering the obvious corruption. And you’ve heard it here summarized this morning, very succinctly, President Biden and the Biden family. We — we owe it to the American people to continue this process, but to do it methodically, and transparently. Many of you know I was on — I’m a lawyer, I’m constitutional law attorney, I served on President Trump’s impeachment defense team twice. And we lament it openly, and we decried how the Democrats politicize that process, they were brazenly political, and how they — they brought those meritless impeachment charges against the — the president.”
“This what you’re seeing here is exactly the opposite. We are the rule of law team, the Republican Party stands for the rule of law. The people in charge of this are doing this thoroughly, carefully, and methodically. They’re investigating and gathering all the facts,” he said.
