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It was a few month in the past when Republican complaints about their very own social gathering’s impeachment campaign in opposition to President Joe Biden reached a brand new degree. One GOP official, for instance, described the trouble as a “parade of embarrassments.”
The evaluation was greater than truthful, although it’s value appreciating simply how lengthy that parade is.
Over the course of a yr, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, Home Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, and their cohorts have introduced in a unprecedented variety of witnesses with the hopes that a minimum of considered one of them would inform GOP investigators what they needed to listen to. Those hopes have been dashed: The witnesses left little doubt that the social gathering’s campaign is and not using a factual basis.
Final week, the Republicans’ fiasco reached new depths when the GOP’s star witness — the person at the heart of the party’s case — was arrested for lying to the FBI about the Bidens. Quickly after, the general public discovered that the identical witness, Alexander Smirnov, in line with a Trump-appointed prosecutor, peddled false claims he obtained from foreign intelligence officials, together with lies from Russia.
This led to a brand new spherical of requires Republicans to simply bring their debacle to a close, which GOP officers ignored. In reality, as a substitute of shifting on to precise work, congressional Republicans shifted their focus to a completely new witness. The headline from the conservative Washington Instances read, “Jason Galanis places Joe Biden at center of Hunter Biden’s China, Russia business deals.”
New jailhouse testimony from a former Biden household enterprise affiliate particulars a minimum of two calls between Hunter Biden and his father, then the vp, about profitable enterprise offers with China and Russia. One of many calls places Mr. Biden in touch with a Russian oligarch and former mayor of Moscow.
Sure, we’re apparently alleged to imagine that GOP officers have lastly discovered a witness who claimed that Hunter Biden related his father to Russian officers in 2014.
The phrase that stood out within the Instances’ report that stood out, nonetheless, was “jailhouse.”
Because it seems, Jason Galanis, the witness that Home Republicans are apparently enthusiastic about, is a convicted felon presently serving a lengthy prison sentence for having perpetrated frauds.
He is the man Jordan is suddenly excited about.
In reality, because it seems, the GOP officers hoping to question the incumbent president hold turning to folks with unlucky run-ins with the legal justice system. Final summer time, for instance, we discovered that Home Republicans relied on dubious claims from somebody named Gal Luft, who’s been charged with being an unregistered agent for China, making an attempt to dealer secret arms offers, violating U.S. sanctions in opposition to Iran, and mendacity to federal brokers.
That, after all, was earlier than the social gathering hyped discredited claims from Smirnov, who’s presently behind bars, charged with mendacity to the FBI in regards to the Bidens, after which additionally hyped claims from Galanis, who’s already a convicted felon, after having been caught perpetrating frauds.
In different phrases, broadly talking, the Republicans who're determined to question Biden — and not using a shred of proof of wrongdoing — have turned to 2 teams of witnesses. One group is crammed with individuals who advised them the president didn’t do something flawed. The opposite group is crammed with suspected or convicted criminals with credibility issues.
The editorial board of The Washington Submit published a piece final week with a message for Comer and Jordan: “Giving up is the right answer. ... Congress’s attempt to punish President Biden for Hunter Biden’s poor decisions was always weak. Now, it has utterly collapsed.”
Per week later, it’s a message that continues to resonate.
