Now we know what a real Russia hoax looks like: a lot like House Republicans’ stumbling attempt to impeach President Biden.

The GOP’s current setback, always doomed, was seriously undermined in federal court last month.

Republicans thought they had a smoking gun, a claim from a longtime, trusted FBI informant that Biden and his son Hunter had secretly accepted millions of dollars from Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma. Unfortunately for Planet MAGA, which includes House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, author of the impeachment resolution Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and the entire lineup of Fox News hosts, frothing at the mouth over this story, apparently it was all a lie.

The smoking gun

turns around

to be an exploding cigar. And the informant? Not that reliable after all.

Last month, a federal grand jury indicted 43-year-old Alexander Smirnov on charges that he lied when he told the FBI that the Bidens had each received $5 million from Burisma. Not only that, according to Special Counsel Jack Weiss, who is overseeing the investigation into Hunter Biden’s finances, Smirnov was likely coached into creating the story by operatives tied to Russian intelligence in an effort to hurt President Biden now he is re-elected, most likely against Putin apologist former President Trump.

Boy, Vladimir Putin can’t keep his nose out of the American presidential elections.

On Wednesday, Weiss filed a motion asking the federal judge overseeing Smirnov’s case to revoke bail. He claimed that Smirnov is actively spreading new lies that could affect the US elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November. Smirnov should be locked up, Weiss said, because he has the financial resources and connections to flee the country. On

Friday, Thursday

Smirnov was arrested again in Las Vegas, where he lives.

Unfortunately, Republicans don’t seem to be able to accept the implosion of their impeachment

attempt.

It doesn’t change the fundamental facts, Jordan insisted to reporters on Wednesday in an exchange posted to YouTube by Forbes.

It

do

change the facts, a journalist intervened off camera, because they are no longer facts, because they are not true.

How did we get here?

In June 2020, Smirnov, a dual citizen of Israel and the United States, passed unverified information to his FBI handler. He said he met with Burisma executives in 2015 and 2016 and they told him about their payments to the Bidens. At the time, Burisma was the subject of a criminal investigation by the corrupt Ukrainian Attorney General Viktor Shokin, who was later fired. Smirnov said he was told that Hunter Biden would take care of all these issues.”

Burisma’s vulnerabilities

through his father.

Smirnov also said he was told the payments would be so difficult to trace that it would take a decade to find out where the money had gone.

MAGA Republicans got wind of the allegations, which were laid out in an FBI form known as a 1023, a raw record of conversations between Smirnov and his FBI.

contact handler

with whom he had spoken almost daily for a decade, leading the FBI to believe it was a credible source.

You can imagine the GOP’s joy. They were so excited that they made the unredacted, unverified document public.

The FBI

said later,

however, that Smirnov had a song about his stay in Ukraine in 2015 and 2016.

According to the indictment,

he had not had any contact with Burisma executives until 2017, long after Biden was out of office, and in any case his dealings with Burisma were routine and unusual.

That should actually be the case, in terms of impeachment.

I think it’s time for Chairman Comer and Republicans to fold the tent on this circus show, said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the Oversight Committee. “It’s really over now.”

The tenacity and self-deception of the MAGA elected officials are second only to Trump’s.

Like Trump, they are angry. Like Trump, they are seeking revenge for Trump’s two impeachments and for the 91 crimes the former president faces. They are angry that their idol could be held responsible for allegedly trying to steal the 2020 presidential election in Washington

,

DC

,

and Georgia, for allegedly removing and hiding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and for allegedly paying hush money to a porn star. Like Trump, they are outraged by the $355 million judgment against him for lying to lenders and New York tax officials about the value of his assets. And don’t even get her started on the $83 million he owes E. Jean Carroll after sticking his fingers in her vagina and calling her a liar when she spoke out about the assault.

I don’t think the MAGA Republicans would put it that way, but they are desperate for a way to convince Americans that Joe Biden is just as corrupt as Donald Trump.

Of course they can’t.

And so, like the dismembered Black Knight in that iconic fight scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” they comically cling to their mortally wounded impeachment plan, proclaiming, “It’s just a scratch!”

@robinkabcarian