Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat from Florida, usually wears loud ensembles and sneakers to work. But for this week’s seven-hour deposition of Hunter Biden on Capitol Hill, Moskowitz came in all black: suit, tie and shoes.
Amen. To the extent there ever was life in the case against the president, it has died after a long illness.
But more fitting than the mourner’s kaddish would be to offer a Panikhida, the Russian Orthodox prayer service for the dead. For the House Republicans’ year-long attempt to impeach Biden, it now seems clear, was based on a Russian disinformation campaign — and House Republicans went along with it, either as useful idiots or knowing accomplices.
The Republicans’ star witness, Alexander Smirnov, has been indicted by a special counsel for fabricating the claim that Joe Biden received a $5 million bribe. He was apparently doing the bidding of Russian intelligence, with which, a court filing shows, he had recent contacts.
Before that, the Republican sleuths’ other key witness, Gal Luft, went missing. It turned out he had been charged in a sealed indictment with arms trafficking and illegal lobbying work — for China. He remains on the lam.
Republicans have also relied on the accounts of one of Hunter Biden’s former business partners, who was sentenced to prison for defrauding a Native American tribe, and of a convicted fraudster House investigators went to visit last week at a prison in Alabama.
Clearly, they will take dirt from any source, no matter how dubious. Even then, they have produced nothing that shows Joe Biden was involved in any way in the businesses of his son. Of course, Republicans don’t actually need any evidence to impeach the president, if they have the votes. But even the impeachment ringleader, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (Ky.), has tiptoed away from this goal. He told a group of us staking out the Hunter Biden deposition on Wednesday that “the purpose of this investigation [is] to create legislation” — legislation to stop “the Bidens from continuing to enrich themselves.”
Wagging two index fingers, Comer admonished: “The American people do not want families to peddle access to the tune of $200,000.” Asked whether his legislation would also target the Trump family, which peddled access to the tune of about $2 billion, Comer ignored the question as he walked away.
The indictment of Smirnov is the most damning, for he had provided, in the words of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (Ohio), “the most corroborating evidence we have.” And the fabricated bribery allegation is just the latest case of MAGA Republicans trumpeting Kremlin propaganda.
They let Russia off the hook for its hacking of the Democratic National Committee and its extensive efforts to influence American social media to Donald Trump’s benefit in 2016, dismissing all that as the “Russia hoax.”
During Trump’s 2019 impeachment for trying to strong-arm Ukraine into providing dirt on Joe Biden for the 2020 campaign, House Republicans defended Trump by echoing Russian disinformation claiming that Ukraine, not Russia, was the country that tried to meddle in the U.S. election.
Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani tried to inject disinformation from an active Russian agent into the 2020 campaign, and two of his associates who worked on the effort were convicted.
More recently, Tucker Carlson and other Trump allies have promoted Russian propaganda related to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) claimed that “Russia is open to a peace agreement, while it is DC warmongers who want to prolong the war,” while Carlson, visiting Moscow, called the city “so much nicer than any city in my country.”
Now, House Speaker Mike Johnson (La.) and his House Republicans, some of them citing Russia’s talking points, are blocking funds for Ukraine’s war effort that the Senate passed overwhelmingly.
Are they unwitting tools of Moscow? Or willing conduits? At the very least, they don’t seem to care that they are serving as Vladimir Putin’s pawns. A dozen or so witnesses testified to House impeachment investigators that the president was not involved in his son’s businesses. The investigators have produced no evidence showing that the elder Biden benefited in any way from his son’s businesses or took any official action to help his son or his brother.
Yet Comer wants so much to believe otherwise that he’s willing to take the word of the indicted Smirnov over that of the FBI and of David Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney serving as special prosecutor. Weiss’s court filing said that Smirnov acknowledges ties to Russian intelligence agencies and that he met in December with a Russian official “who controls groups that are engaged in overseas assassination efforts.” Smirnov was “actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.”
Even knowing that, Comer whipped up a new conspiracy theory with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Tuesday, suggesting Smirnov was indicted not because he fabricated the bribery allegation but because he told the truth. “Alexander Smirnov was another whistleblower,” said Bartiromo, a Trump ally, arguing that Smirnov told the FBI that Biden “accepted bribe money — and now he’s being indicted.”
Comer said he thought the matter “suspicious” and the indictment “very concerning” because he had “zero” trust in the FBI. “The FBI paid him to be a spy in Russia,” the chairman argued. “They indicted him because he was communicating with Russia, but that’s what they paid him for.” Comer went on to defend the truth of claims Smirnov had made. “The part that has never been confirmed is about Joe Biden ... and look, we’re still looking.”
And looking. And looking.
“We all thought that after their key witness was indicted for lying to the FBI about Hunter Biden and was meeting with Russian intelligence that they would stop degrading themselves,” Rep. Greg Casar (D-Tex.) said during a break in the deposition. No such luck.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) argued that “if this impeachment inquiry continues, then Chairman Comer and Chairman Jordan are working with Russia to interfere in the November 2024 election on behalf of Vladimir Putin.”
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tex.), abandoning all qualifiers, declared: “Basically, the Republicans have become synonymous for Russians at this point.”
Even an occasional Republican participating in the Hunter Biden deposition sounded a new note of skepticism. Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.) told reporters that the allegations against the president would amount to bribery — “if true.” But, he added, “one of the elements of impeachment is not simply that we believe he did it.”
Yet without the Russia-fabricated bribery allegation, Republicans have nothing. Before Wednesday’s deposition, in the O’Neill House Office Building, Comer met with reporters in the lobby and read a list of the “evidence” he had against the president.
“Joe Biden received $40,000 directly from the Chinese Communist Party linked entities. This is public corruption 101!” Comer alleged. He also offered his belief that Biden received a $200,000 payment "directly from an influence-peddling scheme. There’s no question about it.”
But the $40,000 was actually a check written to Biden by his sister-in-law, labeled a loan repayment. The $200,000 was a check from his brother, James, labeled the same. Even if the origin of the funds was nefarious, as Comer supposes, the checks were written in 2017 and 2018, when Biden was a private citizen — so it couldn’t possibly have been payment in exchange for official acts.
“What evidence do you have that either as vice president or as president Joe Biden used his political office in any way to benefit either Hunter or James Biden?” asked NBC News’s Ryan Nobles.
Comer said he had “evidence that Joe Biden met with” Chinese officials.
“What specific actions did he take?” Nobles pressed, then, a moment later, reminded Comer that he offered “no evidence that Joe Biden did anything.”
“He got $200,000!” Comer blurted out.
“He wasn’t vice president or president then,” Nobles pointed out.
Comer abandoned his argument and instead attacked the journalist. “You can defend Joe Biden all day long! You can be on his legal defense team!”
“You’re not answering my question,” Nobles replied. “I’m asking you what specific action did he take as an elected public official?”
“Calm down, calm down,” Comer countered, attributing the questioning to “all the angry liberals.”
After that start, the deposition quickly devolved into farce, inside and outside the room. In the closed-door deposition, Republicans broke no new ground, instead grilling the president’s son about crucial matters such as his divorce, his drug use (a transcript released late Thursday had dozens of mentions of addiction) and his use of a speakerphone. They were contemptuous of the president’s son, and he of them.
“Were you on drugs when you were on the Burisma board?” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) asked Hunter Biden.
Biden, apparently referring to the many reports about Gaetz’s partying, responded: “Mr. Gaetz, look me in the eye. You really think that’s appropriate to ask me?”
A feisty Biden repeatedly invoked the influence-peddling of Trump’s son-in-law. “Unlike Jared Kushner, I’ve never received money from a foreign government,” he said, and “I don’t think you have Jared Kushner’s tax returns, do you?”
In his opening statement, Biden labeled the Republicans “dupes in carrying out a Russian disinformation campaign waged against my father.” He scolded them: “You have trafficked in innuendo, distortion and sensationalism — all the while ignoring the clear and convincing evidence staring you in the face. You do not have evidence to support the baseless and MAGA-motivated conspiracies about my father because there isn’t any.”
At one point, CNN’s Annie Grayer reported, Biden went to shake hands with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who at a public hearing had said that he has “no balls.” Mace, who on the basis of the Russia-fabricated bribery allegation had claimed that “Joe Biden [was] caught on tape getting bribed,” went to the lobby and reported to us that Hunter Biden was being “dishonest” in his testimony.
Chick-fil-A bags and pizza boxes went up in the elevator. Lawmakers came down during breaks. Comer had nothing to report. Asked by the Hill’s Mychael Schnell how it was going, he replied: “I’m tickled to death.” It was a funeral, after all.
Adding to the carnival, a mobile billboard sent by the progressive Congressional Integrity Project circled the block, broadcasting: “They continue to try and impeach President Biden on outright lies from convicted felons and Russian assets.”
Finally, at day’s end, Hunter Biden departed with lawyer Abbe Lowell, who told reporters: “It seems to me that the Republican members wanted to spend more time talking about my client’s addiction than ... any question that had anything to do with what they call their impeachment inquiry.”
As they walked out the door, a reporter from the Tucker Carlson-founded Daily Caller shouted after them: “Mr. Biden! Was the cocaine at the White House yours?”
Had they a scintilla of shame, House Republicans would shut down this embarrassing caper before Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) shares more naked photos of Hunter Biden with the world. But there is no longer such a thing as shame. With a straight face, Comer still declares that “we’ve been very effective in getting the truth to the American people.”
It sounds better in the original Russian.
Among those demanding the House pass funding for Ukraine’s defense is Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader. Moscow Mitch no more, the Kentuckian directly called on Speaker Johnson two weeks ago to “find a way to allow the House to work its will on the issue of Ukraine aid.” (After taking a week off, House Republicans returned for a one-day workweek this week without a vote on Ukraine.)
Also this week, McConnell, 82, said he would step down as Republican leader later this year. And the House Freedom Caucus reacted with the sort of decency for which the right-wing group has become known.
“Our thoughts are with our Democrat colleagues in the Senate on the retirement of their Co-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ukraine),” the group posted on X. “Senate Republicans should IMMEDIATELY elect a *Republican* Minority Leader.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) boasted that “we’ve now 86’d” McConnell, as well as former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel.
And Senate hooligans picked up the theme. “This is good news,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) remarked of McConnell’s announcement. “But why wait so long — we need new leadership now.”
Before Senate Republicans rush to replace McConnell, derided by Trump as the “Old Crow,” with someone more to the Freedom Caucus’s tastes, perhaps they should pause to consider what the far-right zealots have done to the House over the last year: Two botched impeachments, the ouster of the speaker, umpteen censure resolutions and an expulsion, failed votes on routine matters, weeks of total paralysis, the collapse of the spending process, the death of border security legislation and the inability to pass much of anything.
Now, the sort of extremists who brought the House to its knees in 2023 and 2024 wish to do the same to the relatively functional Senate in 2025 and 2026, should Republicans gain the majority. Before long, we’ll all be mourning the Old Crow.
