The GOP’s Impeachment Probe Exposed Them As Russian Assets
By calling a hearing into the Bidens' business dealings as part of their sham impeachment probe, Republicans only ended up telling on themselves.
Last week, during a remarkable hearing of the House Oversight Committee, we witnessed the end of the House GOP’s sham effort to impeach Joe Biden.
In fact, with a top 10 list for the ages, Rep. Eric Swalwell announced all the reasons the effort is dead, even declaring its time of death as 5:16pm ET on March 20, 2024.
What made the hearing so notable—indeed what made it so disastrous for the Republican cause—were three distinct factors that created a perfect storm.
1. First, the entire basis for the GOP impeachment probe was a set of allegations from an FBI informant recently indicted for lying to the FBI about Biden.
Alexander Smirnov had been touted by Republicans as a “credible source” of allegations described by The AP as “bribery and espionage involving then-Vice President Biden and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.” Not only was Smirnov charged with lying to the FBI about those very allegations, his intel was based entirely on “Russian intelligence contacts.” Whoops!
2. Second, as Swalwell mentioned in his Top 10 Reasons rant:
“Your key witness today is testifying from the slammer.”
Yes, literally, GOP witness Jason Galanis testified at the hearing via Zoom from prison. The Washington Post described Galanis as “serving a nearly 16-year federal prison sentence in Montgomery, Ala., for multiple fraud schemes.” But his testimony was no bombshell. Galanis simply described a 2014 meeting with Hunter Biden during which he got his father Joe Biden on speakerphone to bolster him in the presence of prospective investors. That’s it.
3. And then there was Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas, the Democrats’ star witness. Parnas’ testimony made clear to anyone listening that, by pursuing an impeachment probe against Joe Biden in the interest of benefiting Trump’s presidential prospects, Republicans ended up exposing just how compromised by the Russians they are, and how willing they are to get in bed with our enemies to try to taint Trump’s political opponent.
While attempting to pin crimes on Joe Biden, they wound up telling on themselves, once again proving that everything Donald Trump touches dies.
Remember Lev Parnas?
You may recall Parnas from the scandal involving Donald Trump’s effort to secure evidence of wrongdoing by then-former Vice President Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election.
Parnas had joined forces with Rudy Giuliani as early as 2018 to aid in Trump’s re-election efforts by seeking out dirt on Biden in Ukraine. Trump correctly had assessed that Biden was Trump’s most likely 2020 opponent, and he wanted to smear him early.
According to CNN:
Trump used the conspiracy theories brought forth by Giuliani and Parnas to falsely claim that as vice president, Joe Biden corruptly abused his powers to pressure Ukraine to fire a top prosecutor who was investigating Ukrainian energy company Burisma as a way to protect Hunter, who served on the firm’s board at the time.
In 2019, Democrats initiated an impeachment inquiry against Trump after his “perfect” phone call came to light, during which Trump attempted to pressure Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelenskyy to open an investigation into Biden. Trump was impeached by the U.S. House on December 18, 2019.
Parnas himself was arrested in October 2019, and then in 2022 was sentenced to 20 months in prison “in connection with convictions on campaign finance, wire fraud and false statements” according to CNN.
So in fairness, Republicans were not the only ones to call sketchy characters as witnesses in last week’s hearing. But the difference is that Parnas has since admitted the error of his ways and is spilling all of the tea.
As he said in the opening statement of his March 20 testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee:
“From shortly after my arrest on October 9, 2019 to now, I have been trying to share the irrefutable truth with you. The American people have been lied to by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and various cohorts of individuals in government and media positions. They created falsehoods to serve their own interests knowing it would undermine the strength of our nation.”
You can watch it below:
Russian Roots Of The GOP’s Sham Biden Impeachment
On February 16, 2024, the House GOP’s prized informant Alexander Smirnov was arrested by the FBI on charges of passing false information to federal authorities.
The AP reported on the specifics of the information Smirnov was charged with spreading:
Alexander Smirnov falsely reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016, prosecutors said in an indictment.
Then on February 20, 2024, the Department of Justice filed a motion urging the detention of Smirnov, making the case that he’s a flight risk.
Buried in the court filing was this bombshell:
“During his custodial interview on February 14, Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1.”
Businessperson 1 here refers to Hunter Biden.
In response to this confirmation that Smirnov’s false charges originated with Russian intelligence, Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking Democratic member of the House Oversight Committee, made clear:
“It appears like the whole thing is not only obviously false and fraudulent, but a product of Russian disinformation and propaganda.”
This was confirmed by Parnas himself in his testimony on March 20, in which Parnas insisted “there was no evidence of the Bidens’ corruption in Ukraine.”
“The impeachment proceedings that bring us here now are predicated on a bunch of false information that is being spread by the Kremlin.”
He went on:
“The only information ever pushed about the Bidens and Ukraine has come from Russia and Russian agents, which everyone sitting here today knows. FBI informant Alexander Smirnov has admitted to getting all his so-called intelligence on the Bidens from Russia.”
But the House GOP wasn’t merely duped by an errant Russian plant. As Parnas made very clear during his live opening statement:
“Everyone involved knew they were sharing lies.”
Parnas said as much in a 2023 letter to House Oversight Chair James Comer:
“The truth is that everyone, from Giuliani and the BLT Team to Devin Nunes and his colleagues, to the people at FOX News, knew that these allegations against the Bidens were false.”
It’s not just Trump and Giuliani that Parnas is implicating. It’s Republican members of Congress themselves who were intimately involved in the investigation.
By calling this impeachment hearing, and giving Democrats the opportunity to call Parnas to testify in front of Congress for the first time, Republicans inadvertently left themselves exposed as compromised officials who actively placed Russian disinformation ahead of the truth.
Which Members Of Congress Are Compromised?
During his opening statement, Lev Parnas called out Texas Rep. Pete Sessions directly as a part of the Trump-Giuliani scheme. Awkwardly, Sessions was right there in the room, on the very committee holding the hearing.
Said Parnas:
Ironically, when I was arrested, my original indictment linked me to an individual referred to as Unindicted Co-conspirator 1. We now know this individual to be Congressman Pete Sessions who sits on this committee today.
According to the Parnas indictment, in 2018, as Chair of the powerful House Rules Committee, Sessions met with Parnas and his co-conspirator Igor Fruman about their effort to oust then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. According to Parnas, Yovanovitch had been a vocal critic of Trump and was blocking the effort to convince Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
Parnas and Fruman had committed to raising $20,000 each for Sessions, and in return the Congressman, facing a tough reelection fight, agreed to seek the recall of Yovanovitch, which was ultimately successful. In the end, a pro-Trump Super PAC spent $3 million to aid Sessions in his 2018 reelection bid, which he ultimately lost to Colin Allred. Sessions switched districts in 2020 and returned to Congress.
Sessions was not the only sitting member of Congress name-checked by Parnas in last week’s hearing. In a particularly damning exchange, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin asked Parnas:
“How were you and Giuliani able to take these false allegations peddled by corrupt officials and Russian agents and promote and amplify them here in the United States in our political system?”
Parnas replied:
“The main group that was being pushed through was Fox, Sean Hannity and some other media personalities over there. But then there was also other people that were doing the bidding for the Russians. People in Congress like Senator Ron Johnson, like Congressman Pete Sessions who sits here right now.”
In fact, Parnas referred to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin as “our guy in the Senate,” accusing him of “doing the bidding of Russia” by spreading disinformation to harm Joe Biden.
As Parnas went on to testify about Johnson:
"It was told to me that when we push the information, he's gonna push it in the halls of Congress."
And so Johnson did, initiating an investigation along with Senator Chuck Grassley to push the debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine had sought to interfere in the 2016 election in Hillary Clinton’s favor, as well as seeking proof that Biden acted corruptly in Ukraine to benefit his son.
As he was warned against by Democrats, Republicans, and the FBI alike, Johnson relied on Russian disinformation as the basis for his investigation, which ultimately concluded in 2020.
As The New York Times put it:
The report delivered on Wednesday appeared to be little more than a rehashing of unproven allegations that echoed a Russian disinformation campaign.
But that wasn’t the extent of Parnas’s implication of members of Congress during his testimony. Parnas also cited the “BLT Team,” which involved then Congressman Devin Nunes.
As Parnas noted in his prepared opening remarks:
“At Trump’s behest, in early 2019 Giuliani convened a group of political and media professionals for regular strategy meetings at BLT Steak in Washington, D.C. Among others, this group included John Solomon, an investigative reporter for The Hill who had many contacts at FOX News.
Then Congressman Devin Nunes, who had been leading his own investigation into the Bidens, also decided to work with the BLT Team. I coordinated at least two Skype interviews with Ukrainian officials and a Nunes senior staff member for the purposes of Nunes’ investigation.”
At that point, Congressman Nunes was Chair of the House Intelligence Committee and was Trump’s point person on digging up dirt on Biden, even meeting with a Ukrainian prosecutor in Vienna to aid in the effort.
In the end though, as CNN made clear in 2019:
There is no evidence that the Bidens acted inappropriately. Nor is there evidence to support the conspiracy theory that Ukraine worked with Democrats to interfere in the 2016 election.
Yet these claims have been a key part of the public defense of the President put forth by Nunes and other Republicans during the impeachment hearings this month.
Republicans Still Used The Same Debunked Claims To Try To Impeach Biden
In his testimony last week, Parnas reiterated this finding of Biden’s innocence, ultimately implicating every Republican trying to push for the President’s impeachment based on Russia’s lies.
“Throughout this entire situation, no credible source has ever provided proof of Joe or Hunter Biden’s alleged corruption in Ukraine. The FBI, CIA, and NSA have all failed to produce any evidence of criminal activity. No respectable Ukrainian official has ever said that the Bidens did anything illegal…
“Even when Mykola Zlochevsky, the co-founder and CEO of Burisma, was offered a deal on his own criminal charges by Giuliani in exchange for information on the Bidens, he came up empty. The only information ever pushed about the Bidens and Ukraine has come from Russia and Russian agents, which everyone sitting here today knows.”
This was well established back in 2019, yet Republicans still used the same tired playbook in 2023 and 2024 in an attempt to impeach Joe Biden.
Now, after yet another failed hearing, Oversight Chair James Comer is seeking an offramp because, as Swalwell noted eloquently in his rant declaring the impeachment effort dead:
“I dare you impeach. But you won’t, because you don’t have the evidence. And because you don’t have the evidence, you don’t have the votes.”
Comer all but admitted this in the days following the hearing, telling Newsmax that the committee will seek “criminal referrals” rather than an impeachment vote.
Parnas’s testimony and specific warnings about Russian disinformation mules within Congress should not go unheeded. They present a corrosive and continuing threat to the proper functioning of our democracy. And the next time Republicans come at any Democratic leaders with wild accusations, the first question the media and the public should ask is who is pushing that story.
Trump’s Russian ties and his admiration for Vladimir Putin have been well-established. It’s clear that if reelected, Trump will do Putin’s bidding, particularly when it comes to the war with Ukraine, by ending U.S. funding of the war effort. So, it’s no accident that Republicans in Congress are actively resisting approval of that funding as well.
Their use of Russian disinformation to try to impeach Biden aligns with their opposition to funding the war in Ukraine. These Republicans have shown themselves to be nothing less than Russian assets, and if they are reelected along with Trump in November, Putin will have what he wants most of all: a sort of shadow government right here in the U.S.
I guess I’ve grown old.
I remember a time when the Republican Party and all its members saw the “Soviet threat” as the Number #1 threat to American Democracy and our Allies, and called Democrats “soft” on this threat.
And now? It’s “party over country” and their *only* allegiance is to anyone that can provide them with “stories” that will fit their narrative of Democratic Party “corruption”.
I’d call it “sad” if it weren’t so truly gut wrenching.
Remember when a bunch of MAGA Reps (and Senators?) all spent the Fourth of July in Russia? Who were they again? Did it include Johnson and Sessions? And who else? And WTF were they doing there anyhow? Didn't even celebrate our freedoms... didn't even spend time with their families? How low have they fallen? All the way into Putin's pocket. The MAGAs are now just so much lint in a very filthy pocket. But I'm betting they are flush with Rubles.