GOP House Intel Chair Unbothered By Indictment of Key Witness in Hunter Biden Investigation
The prosecutor overseeing the Hunter Biden investigation last week indicted a key witness in the GOP’s case against Hunter Biden, Alexander Smirnov, for lying to the FBI. But Rep. Mike Turner, GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, wants the Republican impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden regarding his son’s business dealings to continue, even though Rep. Jim Jordan recently said that “the most corroborating evidence” against the Bidens stems from Smirnov’s claims.
Turner appeared on Sunday’s Meet the Press where host Kristen Welker asked him about Smirnov. “A former FBI informant has been charged with lying about Joe and Hunter Biden seeking millions of dollars in bribes from a Ukrainian company, allegations that are really central to the Republicans’ effort to impeach the president,” Welker said. “You voted to support this impeachment inquiry. Do you think it’s responsible to continue this inquiry given these charges against this FBI informant?”
Special counsel David Weiss indicted Smirnov on Feb. 15 with one count of making a false statement and one count of creating a false and fictitious record for statements he made to the FBI. According to a DOJ statement, “Smirnov provided false derogatory information to the FBI” about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden related to Hunter’s business dealings with Ukraine.
But Turner said he believes it is “absolutely” responsible of Republicans to continue the impeachment inquiry regardless of this new information. “This inquiry, and it is an inquiry, is based upon actual bank records, documents, transactions of money, large sums of money,” Turner said. “And doing an inquiry as to, you know, how these funds got to the Biden family from international sources — China, Russia, Ukraine — that is certainly an issue that Congress needs to take up. And I think the investigation will continue.”
Welker pushed back. “But Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said just a few weeks ago that ‘the most corroborating evidence’ comes from this informant’s allegations, and they are at the ‘heart’ of the impeachment case,” she said. “Even before that, Senator Lindsey Graham said to me there’s no ‘smoking gun.’ So can you justify continuing with this impeachment inquiry?”
“I think you have to continue it until it reaches its natural conclusion,” Turner said of the impeachment inquiry. “But I’m not surprised at all that a business associate and associate of the Biden family might be untruthful. But we’ll just have to continue to see what the bank records, the transactions tell, how that story unfolds. And I believe that Chairman Comer’s doing a great job in this.”
“Just to be clear, he was an FBI informant. Not necessarily an associate,” Welker said, referring to Smirnov.
As independent journalist Marcy Wheeler noted on X (formerly Twitter), Turner may have confused Tony Bobulinski, a former Hunter Biden associate, with Smirnov, an informant. Bobulinski briefly worked with Hunter Biden on a deal with a Chinese energy firm, but others involved in the plan “have since described Bobulinski as a tangential figure in the negotiations,” ABC News reported. Smirnov, on the other hand, claimed to have known about Hunter’s dealings in Ukraine because he was on a call with the owner of Ukrainian energy company Burisma during the time Hunter sat on Burisma’s board. Smirnov allegedly lied about that call. He also allegedly falsely claimed that executives tied to Burisma told him they hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”
A representative for Turner did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Responding to the news of Smirnov’s charges, Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement last week, “For months we have warned that Republicans have built their conspiracies about Hunter and his family on lies told by people with political agendas, not facts.”