Republicans double down on lies to the Federal Bureau of Investigation

benfell

Neoliberalism

Democratic (neoliberal) Party

Joe Biden


Fig. 1. Joe Biden and Pope Francis, unknown photographer, April 29, 2016, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

[T]he F.B.I.’s trusted informant [Alexander Smirnov, whose testimony Republicans relied upon] appears instead to have been an inveterate liar who successfully injected Russian lies about the President of the United States into a partisan election-year impeachment inquiry.[1]

Susan Glasser thinks the impeachment quest should now be dead, killed with charges against Alexander Smirnov for lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including the claims that Joe Biden had accepted bribes. The trouble here, as she acknowledges, is that Republicans have only doubled down on this quest. An abject absence of evidence[2] has never stopped white Christian nationalists in the past—remember Benghazi, for crying out loud?—so why should we believe it will now?

It was perhaps no surprise that the House Republicans’ fever dream of impeachment would evaporate. Their revenge play on behalf of the twice-impeached ex-President [Donald Trump] always seemed more about payback and partisan politics than anything else. Since taking back the House and launching their probe of [Joe] Biden last year, they have publicly struggled to find any crime—never mind the requisite high crimes and misdemeanors—to fit the preordained punishment. In the course of their shambolic inquiry, many theories of malfeasance by the President had been advanced, from alleged nefarious doings with China, Kazakhstan, Romania, and other countries to Biden’s alleged money laundering on behalf of his brother. But even the probe’s deepest skeptics could not have imagined this latest twist: a fake Ukrainian bribe, seemingly ordered up to fit the Republicans’ darkest fantasies of Biden, and passed along by a source who would eventually admit to spreading lies given to him by Russian spies.[3]

If Republicans really wanted to get Biden, they’d go after him for being a war criminal.

James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has so far stopped short of calling an official halt to the probe, but [Jamie] Raskin said that he had sensed a political shift. “Chairman Comer seems to have given up the ghost on impeachment,” Raskin told me. “They seem to be acknowledging the political math is not there for them.”[4]

I’ll believe this when James Comer actually calls an official halt. He won’t, of course, because Donald Trump’s supporters won’t allow it. So my prediction has to be for many more months of this nonsense. Which Glasser eventually concedes:

In today’s Congress, the fight, somehow, must always go on. For years, [Donald] Trump and his backers have fed elaborate conspiracy theories about the President [Joe Biden] and his son [Hunter Biden] to their base. This particular trope about Biden and Ukraine and the bribe that wasn’t is unlikely to die off swiftly. [Jamie] Raskin readily admitted that some Republicans in Congress were likely to keep pressing the matter even after its source had been discredited—“like Confederate soldiers lost in the woods somewhere,” still fighting on long after the war was over. In the way of conspiracy theories, he fears that [Alexander] Smirnov’s takedown may soon end up being portrayed as just another deep-state plot to cover up Biden’s crimes. I suspect it will not be long before this prediction comes to pass.[5]

Susan B. Glasser, “The Crazy Collapse of the House G.O.P.’s Impeachment Case Against Biden,” New Yorker, February 22, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/the-crazy-collapse-of-the-house-gops-impeachment-case-against-biden

Illiberalism

Gilead

Gun nuttery


Fig. 1. “Rally Against Gun Control ‘Come and Take it’ flag at the Minnesota State Capitol,” photograph by Fibonacci Blue [pseud.], April 28, 2018, via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Jacob Gershman, “Jury Orders Ex-NRA Chief Wayne LaPierre to Pay More Than $4 Million Back to Gun-Rights Group,” Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2024, https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/jury-orders-ex-nra-chief-wayne-lapierre-to-pay-4-million-back-to-gun-rights-group-24be61fb

  1. [1]Susan B. Glasser, “The Crazy Collapse of the House G.O.P.’s Impeachment Case Against Biden,” New Yorker, February 22, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/the-crazy-collapse-of-the-house-gops-impeachment-case-against-biden↩
  2. [2]Susan B. Glasser, “The Crazy Collapse of the House G.O.P.’s Impeachment Case Against Biden,” New Yorker, February 22, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/the-crazy-collapse-of-the-house-gops-impeachment-case-against-biden↩
  3. [3]Susan B. Glasser, “The Crazy Collapse of the House G.O.P.’s Impeachment Case Against Biden,” New Yorker, February 22, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/the-crazy-collapse-of-the-house-gops-impeachment-case-against-biden↩
  4. [4]Susan B. Glasser, “The Crazy Collapse of the House G.O.P.’s Impeachment Case Against Biden,” New Yorker, February 22, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/the-crazy-collapse-of-the-house-gops-impeachment-case-against-biden↩
  5. [5]Susan B. Glasser, “The Crazy Collapse of the House G.O.P.’s Impeachment Case Against Biden,” New Yorker, February 22, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/the-crazy-collapse-of-the-house-gops-impeachment-case-against-biden↩

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.