Joe Biden's Impeachment is Unraveling

Republican efforts to impeach President Joe Biden appear to be unraveling following the indictment of a key witness in the investigation led by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer.

Comer is facing strong criticism from Democrats and calls to end the impeachment effort after Special Counsel David Weiss announced charges against 43-year-old Alexander Smirnov on Thursday for allegedly making false statements and manufacturing false records concerning Joe Biden's business dealings in Ukraine.

Weiss is an appointee of former President Donald Trump and was chosen to lead the investigation into Hunter Biden by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The indictment has dealt a serious blow to House Republicans' impeachment efforts, though Representative Comer said in a statement on Thursday that the inquiry was "not reliant on the FBI's FD-1023."

Smirnov made his claims as a "confidential human source" in an FD-1023, a document the FBI uses to record information from such sources.

"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," Comer said. The president has said he had no involvement with Hunter Biden's business dealings and the White House has described the GOP's impeachment effort as "sad, pathetic, and a waste of everyone's time."

It remains unclear what steps House Republicans will take regarding the impeachment proceedings following the indictment but Democrats have already called for the effort to end.

Newsweek has reached out to the White House via email for comment.

'Fraudulent' Impeachment

House Democrats seized on the indictment and called for an end to the impeachment inquiry.

"Special Counsel Weiss's investigation is just the most recent to debunk the Ukraine-Burisma conspiracy theory at the heart of this fraudulent impeachment inquiry," said Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, in a statement on Thursday.

Smirnov's claims that Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, had each received a $5 million bribe from Ukrainian energy company Burisma was a key factor in the effort to impeach the president launched by House Republicans last year.

Raskin's statement said: "It is an undeniable fact that Republicans' allegations against President Biden have always been a tissue of lies built on conspiracy theories, and I formally call on Speaker Johnson, Chairman Comer, and House Republicans to stop promoting this nonsense and end their doomed impeachment inquiry."

Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz took aim at Comer during an interview with CNN on Thursday and suggested Speaker of the House Mike Johnson should assess whether Comer should remain chair of the oversight committee.

"When did James Comer know this was false and how long did he conceal that from the American people?" Moskowitz said.

"Are you telling me he just found out through the indictment or has he known all along or at least for a period of time that this 1023 form was made up? Those are real questions we need to get to the bottom [of]," he said.

Newsweek has reached out to Comer's office via email outside of office hours for comment on the criticism he's received.

Speaking on CNN on Thursday, Elliot Williams, former deputy assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and CNN legal analyst, suggested the indictment had dealt a fatal blow to Republicans' impeachment push.

"I think it eviscerates an impeachment effort," Williams said, adding that the evidence of wrongdoing on Joe Biden's part was "pretty thin to begin with" and noted that "a lot of people" relied on Smirnov's claims.

"I'm genuinely curious, sort of as a citizen, as much as a former Hill staffer and prosecutor, what the folks on the Hill do with it now because literally your star witness—his testimony has been completely discredited by law enforcement," Williams said.

A previous key witness in the impeachment probe, former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer, also proved to be a dud when he failed to provide the House Oversight Committee with any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden during a hotly anticipated testimony in August.

Indictments

Democratic Representative Don Beyer took to X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday to point out that Smirnov is not the first impeachment informant to be indicted.

"Incredibly, this is not even the first time a key 'informant' for James Comer and House Republicans' ridiculous impeachment inquiry has been criminally indicted for lying to the FBI," Beyer wrote, sharing a news article about charges against Gal Luft.

In July, an eight-count indictment against Luft was unsealed as the DOJ announced he had been charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent on behalf of China, violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, trafficking in arms, and making false statements to federal agents among other matters.

Comer had described Luft as a "very credible witness on Biden family corruption" in a tweet the week before the indictment was unsealed. Luft is a fugitive from U.S. authorities.

Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive-leaning media research center, noted on X that Smirnov's claims had been central to corruption allegations levied against President Biden.

"Per the indictment, the informant's story is impossible; he claimed in the 1023 that a Burisma official told him he bribed the Bidens around December 2015, but the informant never met with a Burisma official until 2017," Gertz said.

"Per the indictment, during an FBI interview in 2023, the informant said that he had 'seen video footage of [Hunter Biden] entering' a Kyiv hotel and his sources say his phone calls may have been tapped by the Russians," Gertz said.

"Just one problem: Hunter Biden has never been to Ukraine," he wrote.