Arrest of FBI informant looms over GOP grilling of Biden’s brother

Republicans intent on grilling President Biden’s brother Wednesday were thrown onto defense over the indictment just days earlier of the FBI informant whose allegations against the president were central to the GOP impeachment inquiry.

In more than eight hours behind closed doors, GOP lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee pressed James Biden on the details surrounding years of financial transactions both at home and abroad — a marathon interrogation with a blockbuster witness designed to advance the Republicans’ allegations of financial wrongdoing by the president and his family. 

But looming large over the day’s proceedings was last week’s arrest of Alexander Smirnov, the FBI informant who provided information central to the GOP’s charges of corruption and influence peddling against the president. The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Smirnov with lying to the FBI by fabricating his claims against the president, including the assertion that Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, each accepted a $5 million bribe from a Ukrainian energy company. 

The storm surrounding Smirnov grew Tuesday with the release of a DOJ filing revealing that Smirnov told the agency he received information about Hunter Biden from “officials associated with Russian intelligence.”

For Republicans, those developments were poorly timed, lending Democrats new ammunition in their attacks on the impeachment process while forcing GOP leaders to defend the investigation just as they were celebrating the opportunity to grill the president’s brother face-to-face.

Democrats quickly aimed their fire.

“The impeachment investigation essentially ended yesterday, in substance if not in form, with the explosive revelation that Mr. Smirnov’s allegations about Ukrainian Burisma payments to Joe Biden were concocted along with Russian intelligence agents,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, told reporters during a break in Wednesday’s deposition on Capitol Hill.

“It appears like the whole thing is not only, obviously, false and fraudulent, but a product of Russian disinformation and propaganda,” he added. “And that’s been the motor force behind this investigation for more than a year.”

Republicans, however, are downplaying the significance of Smirnov’s arrest, arguing that their case still stands despite the informant’s indictment.

“Well, I mean, it is what it is,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the Judiciary Committee, told reporters. “It doesn’t change the fundamental facts.”

“Those facts, they don’t change regardless of what this confidential human source is saying,” he said of Smirnov after ticking off a number of GOP claims about Hunter Biden and his time on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Some have also tried to flip the script on the FBI, questioning why the bureau had employed Smirnov for so long, and why the confidential source had been described by Republicans and Democrats briefed on his allegations as credible.

“This is the guy they paid, I think since 2010, so 14 years they’ve been paying this guy, and he’s a trusted source, and now we find out he isn’t,” Jordan said.

Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.), a former prosecutor, offered another reason the Republicans will press ahead with their probe: They simply don’t trust the DOJ to have it right with Smirnov. 

“I’m a member of Congress, I’ve been a prosecutor for five years, and I don’t trust the criminal justice system,” Timmons said. “I don’t trust New York judges. I don’t trust the prosecutors in Georgia. I don’t trust the DOJ.” 

The remarkable appearance of the president’s brother on Capitol Hill is just the latest act in the months-long political drama pitting the president, who’s seeking reelection this year, against House Republicans, who’ve launched an impeachment inquiry against him centered on accusations of financial wrongdoing. Hunter Biden is set to testify before the Oversight and Judiciary committees behind closed doors next week.

Republicans have not produced clear evidence to back those charges. But as they dig deeper into the tangled business history of the president’s brother and son, they claim to be getting closer to implicating the president.

“There’s [an] enormous amount of circumstantial evidence that shows that Hunter and Jim were selling the brand, and Joe Biden was profiting from it financially. So we’re going to find out if that’s true,” Timmons said. “That’s why we’re here.”

The GOP’s interest in James Biden is centered on two checks he wrote to Joe Biden when the elder brother was not serving in public office. Republicans have suggested the exchanges are evidence that the Bidens were involved in a bribery scheme, dismissing the “loan repayment” message on the checks’ memo lines as proof of nothing. 

“You can’t just write ‘loan repayment’ on a check and make it fine,” Timmons said. “So we’re going to figure out what exactly the loan was for.”

The first check — worth $200,000 — was written by James Biden after he received a loan from Americore Health, as an unrelated loan repayment. James Biden allegedly told the health care company that his name could “open doors” in the Middle East, but he did not help in the end. The loan payment does not have any connections to foreign work.

The other check — priced at $40,000 — was written after Hunter Biden landed a deal with the Chinese energy company CEFC, and Hunter wired money to James Biden. The president’s brother then used some of those funds to repay Joe Biden. Republicans have cited the check as part of their argument that the president received money that was laundered from China.

James Biden hit back at the accusations surrounding the payments Wednesday, explaining in his opening statement that he solicited loans from family members, friends, business partners or financial institutions during the “number of occasions” when his financial obligations exceeded funds available to him.

“They were short-term loans that I received from Joe when he was a private citizen, and I repaid them within weeks,” James Biden said in his opening remarks.

“He had no information at all about the source of the funds I used to repay him,” the younger Biden continued. “The complete explanation is that Joe lent me money, and I repaid him as soon as I had the funds to do so.”

James Biden also testified that his brother “played no role, was not involved with, and received no benefits from” his work with Americore and CEFC.

Those arguments have been enough to satisfy President Biden’s Democratic allies, who have accused Republicans of conducting a political witch hunt for the sole purpose of damaging the president’s reelection chances. 

“He was not involved in any way, and he was not receiving any money from them. He was not a business partner, or a business associate,” Raskin said. “That has been well established, time and time again.”

Republicans, however, aren’t ready to take the president’s brother at his word, and several GOP lawmakers emerged from Wednesday’s testimony to say that Biden, under questioning, contradicted parts of his opening statement.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said James Biden told lawmakers that he was unaware that CEFC, which directed millions of dollars into accounts controlled by the Bidens, had ties to Beijing. 

“To believe James Biden is to believe that a major Chinese energy company was somehow not connected to the Chinese government,” Gaetz said. “It just doesn’t pass the straight-face test.”

Democrats aren’t quite defending the business practices of James and Hunter Biden, but they’re quick to point out that Republicans have produced no concrete evidence that the president has benefited directly from the financial dealings of his family. That’s the charge at the core of the GOP’s impeachment investigation — and the narrative that was undercut by Smirnov’s arrest. 

Smirnov is not the only setback Republicans have encountered this year as they charge ahead with their impeachment probe. 

Last month, two of Hunter Biden’s business partners — Rob Walker and Eric Schwerin — testified privately before the Oversight Committee. Both of them said forcefully that President Biden had no hand in his son’s business ventures. 

They did, however, land a significant victory last month, when Hunter Biden agreed to testify behind closed doors as part of the GOP’s impeachment inquiry. Confirmation of the deposition — which is set for Feb. 28 — came after a months-long battle between Hunter Biden’s team and Republicans on the Oversight and Judiciary committees, who have said the younger Biden’s testimony is crucial to the GOP’s case against the president.

While James Biden’s transcribed interview was the main focus Wednesday, Republicans were already looking ahead to next week’s long-awaited deposition with Hunter Biden.