We now know that:
- Alexander Smirnov lied to prosecutors about Burisma paying $5 million bribes to Hunter and Joe Biden.
- These lies started in June 2020.
- Smirnov began an extensive series of meetings with Russian intelligence officials in 2019.
- Republicans made Smirnov's accusations a centerpiece of their corruption charges against the Biden family.
Draw your own conclusions. At this point, the question is: What did Republican investigators know about all this and when did they know it?
Sadly, nobody cares. Certainly not the GOP or its voters; any attack on Biden or democrats is ipso facto good, whether or not it's true. Certainly not the MSM; if it bleeds, it leads, and devil take the hindmost. And probably not most Democratic or "undecided" voters, who think lying about your opponent is just part of the noise of politics.
Feh.
I disput this. All but the reaction of GQP voters, who have only heard that "Biden" arrested their big star witness and is holding him hostile.
LOL! You? Who are you?
I'm just going by the evidence of my eyes and ears.
Me, too, but I read some also.
I read with my eyes. That's what I was referring to. I don't use braille.
And, also, Smirnov is a tool of Russian intelligence, and seemingly any other intelligence agency that happen across him.
This really sounds like something any investigator would have worked out almost immediately and yet the wingnut 'special' counsel proceeded to smear Hunter Biden for years anyway.
Sounds like, at least, the basis of an epic lawsuit.
I suspect Smirnov's report was dismissed as worthless hearsay in 2020, so no resources were devoted to investigating it. Remember the FBI had been trashed by Republicans for investigating much more plausible hearsay in the Steele dossier. Then in 2023 Grassley publicly demanded it be properly investigated, and now we have the result.
I think it was Hunter Biden's lawyers that forced the issue, not Grassley. Grassley was just running his mouth. Biden's defense lawyers actually received documents during discovery that indicated the Special Prosecutor was relying on information from a source that the FBI had determined to be lying about Biden.
Once these documents were in the hands of Biden's lawyers, the DOJ had to act.
My tenses are wrong. Bidens lawyers were about to receive this material and this forced the DOJ to act in advance of handing over damning information.
Republicans don't "know" things, Kevin. Only us pointy-headed liberal elitists "know" things. Republicans just follow their infallible common-guy guts.
When did Republicans ask for dirt on Biden?
Probably some day ending with "y".
We all know the repulsives are a party of lies and morons. Unfortunately, it takes time and money to rescue folks caught in their mephitic web.
"What did Republican investigators know about all this and when did they know it?"
1) Everything
2) From git-go
Pretty much, since Ukraine's been pretty transparent about it, and Hunter never had any receipts.
Russian intelligence has been feeding lies to Republicans in order to help get Trump reelected, and Republicans reward this help by blocking aid to Ukraine. These are just different pieces of the same overall conspiracy by Putin to restore the Russian Empire to its old borders, an effort which kicked into overdrive at least ten years ago.
More plausible than anything of which the House has accused Biden.
What did Republican investigators know about all this and when did they know it?
Interesting questions, but of course irrelevant to their actions. What they knew was they were able to say that somebody was saying something, that their propaganda organizations would broadcast it widely and incessantly, and their bog-stupid followers would believe every word of it.
Yes.
Kevin, you're not going far enough.
What does Russian Intel have on Ron Johnson, for instance?
Paul Gosar's finances are probably pretty interesting, too.
We know the NRA was a "Russian asset" in 2016, per the Senate[1]. I don't think it is much of a stretch to wonder what a look at the NRC finances would show.
And so on. If we could find a way to resolve it, I'd be willing to make a large wager on there being more Russian assets in the house than Freedom Caucus members (although with a fair amount of overlap).
[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/09/27/764879242/nra-was-foreign-asset-to-russia-ahead-of-2016-new-senate-report-reveals
You can go back even further - CA former rep Dana Rohrabacher was long suspected of having ties to Russia in the oughts.
Russian operatives in Ukraine have been feeding Rudy Giuliani sweet little anti-Biden lies since at least 2017. Who gave Rudy a backup drive that supposedly had a copy of a laptop disk on it, which some blind guy assured them had belonged to Hunter Biden, who of course never left his name or any contact information and so could never be notified that his laptop had been "fixed."
Russia has discovered what Pat Buchanan and the Nixon Ratf**ers learned decades ago: the Republican base consists largely of credulous rubes who will buy -- or believe -- anything.* They just need a gentle push in the right directions.
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* Even gold-painted high tops at $400 a pop, or "nonfungible tokens" to images you can see for free on your phone or other computer.
The laptop story has never made sense. Who gees around with an image-disk copy to hand out .... to Giuliani.
"...What did Republican investigators know about all this and when did they know it?"
More, and earlier, than anyone thinks.
Yes:
https://www.salon.com/2024/02/22/humiliation-fox-host-buries-as-admits-we-were-warned-about-indicted-informant/
We also know that the US and international community -- and VP Biden -- demanded the Ukrainian prosecutor be removed because he was NOT investigating Busrima.
Yet the GOP keeps saying that the prosecutor WAS doing so.
Not just Smirnov is lying here. The GOP's pants are on fire, too.
The more pointed question, for me, is why these guys have been so confident that the lying would never be found out.
Purely unrelated, imho anyone who comes within a country mile of Smirnov from now on needs to be swept for novichuk. Just sayin'
"...why these guys have been so confident that the lying would never be found out."
They don't care about being found out. They just go to other lies.
... and continue to repeat those that have been debunked. Because the debunking occurred only in the "reality-based community", which the maga-base avoids at all cost.
There's no accountability, which assures bad behavior. Just look at what's going on now in Gaza, after over 75 years of "no accountability".
Yhouda could not be more correct.
I mean, there isn't a single potential possible action that Repubs wouldn't "investigate" as to a Dem if they thought their idiot base might buy it.
I know Kevin's question was meant to be fun and sort of historically witty, but considering the make up of the Repub coalition it is in the end silly question to ask. The hard core gun nuts could care less about the appropriate foundation for any congressional action. The anti abortionists could care less. The sporting racists could care less. The anti regulation of all kinds gang could care less. And finally, the "we ain't letting any more brown people into the country, or for that matter, giving another dollar to anyone brown or darker" gang could care less.
The only connection of this nonsense is with the anti taxation gang, who began pushing the "government is a joke" line through Grover Norquist.
That's why having the House pass only 27 bills, and spend all day long on ridiculous investigations is fine. It proves government is a joke.
If they could get away with it they would pass zero bills and spend all day on Fox news. Gaetz one time pretended to have to break into a hearing that had half republicans in the hearing.
Its not as if we should dismiss this as unserious because we, as Dems, have considered it, we shouldn't even waste that much time -- the Repubs are blatantly saying that government is a joke and they act that way if they can possisbly pull it off.
Clearly, the investigators will all become Sergeants Schultz.
I’m never going to hear this reference for the last time, am I?
What Crimes did those Republicans commit, in pursuing allegations that they knew were false, and in making allegations that they knew were false? And who is going to prosecute those crimes?
The questions I want answered are:
(1) How dumb are James Comer and Gym Jordan?
(2) How much of our taxes did they spend on their vindictive, false investigations?
How some of these individuals respond in the coming days will tell us a lot.
Is there a law against pernicious neglect, or dereliction of governance? Where a public official, for one reason or another, purposely avoids fulfilling the duties and obligations of their office?
I admit it would have to be a high bar to be practical but it seems Republicans make it over that bar every time.
I think the periodic scheduled "elections" thing was supposed to take care of that.
I think that we should upgrade to a system like "Nosedive" in an early Black Mirror series - but for politicians.
Maybe that treason section would cover some of those actions but only in time of war...
May be time to start arresting people for treason.
Shooter statement of Republican beliefs: “Donald said it, I believe it, and that settles it”.
Shooter is almost certainly dead. He was exactly the person who would never have worn a mask.
Good news, everyone!
U.S. Attorney Announces Nuclear Materials Trafficking Charges Against Japanese Yakuza Leader,
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-attorney-announces-nuclear-materials-trafficking-charges-against-japanese-yakuza
This goes back at least 30 years to Dana Rohrbacher's "friendship" with Putin.
You have to say, how dumb is this Weiss guy that he believed anything about Hunter Biden coming from someone named Alexander Smirnov? Was Weiss so steeped in MAGA-osity that it didn't occur to him he was being manipulated by Putin? Isn't Weiss some sort of prosecutor? This is the best DoJ has?
It's only this kind of character who gets appointed as Special Counsel.
But he did arrest Smirnov, though seemingly when he could no longer avoid it, so he's miles better than the rest of them.
There's no suggestion he believed these particular allegations. Indeed the FBI fought hard to keep them classified. I suspect Weiss looked at the allegations, realised they were worthless hearsay, and saw no point in doing anything beyond filing the record of interview.
Whether or not Smirnov was truly regarded by the FBI as a "highly credible informant" is probably something we'll never know. However the indictment suggests he wasn't exactly a trusted source:
Like a person above, I know Kevin's posting is a big of fun.
However, there is a serious problem here - never mind the Republicans, crazy political stuff has always been around. The serious problem is quality control in the DOJ, & that starts at the top.
If you want to criticize Biden, this is where the buck stops. He needed to appoint a tough AG to clean house, & he didn't. He needs to fix this problem pronto. A lot of runamuck and also ploddingly slow work has been going on - there's no hand on the tiller apparently. It's inexcusable.
Were Jordan and Comer just dupes? Or is someone going to end up with suborning perjury charges?
There was a group of FBI agents who were working with this guy for ten years.
There was that high ranking FBI agent in New York who was responsible for the Hillary's email fiasco who has been arrested as a Russian agent.
We need to ask how penetrated is the FBI?
After Robert Hanson they seem to have developed quite a history, if not an institutional tradition, of treason.
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Tony Bobulinski's testimony before the House committee:
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Bobulinski-Transcript.pdf
Things got quite testy at times. I just searched for references to the FBI, Bobulinski states that the record (a '302') of his interview with the agency contains 'numerous' errors, 'multiple mistakes'. Rep. Dan Goldman knows that FBI protocols involve two agents independently taking notes, later reconciled and reviewed for accuracy by every agent present -- Bobulinski says there were six or seven. B. still contends that what he is telling the committee is correct, the 302 is wrong. Seems like a tough row to hoe. He says several times that the FBI didn't follow up with him. Maybe they aren't so credulous.