For real, can we recap: Sitting members of Congress initiated IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS against a U.S. President based on information passed to them by an agent of Russian intelligence. Same members refuse to pass aid to Ukraine. Same members defend Trump.
— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) February 21, 2024
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Josh Marshall calls it A Bigger Story Than You Can Possibly Imagine
Let’s review recent events. First came the news that prosecutors in special counsel David Weiss’s office had decided that the confidential FBI informant who had been one of Biden’s top accusers had been lying and that they were charging him for lying to the FBI. That next step is critical. Informants lie to prosecutors all the time. They seldom get charged. It’s one standard to decide your informant isn’t telling the truth and/or won’t hold up at trial. It’s an entirely different one to think that you can prove they knowingly lied beyond a reasonable doubt. Clearly investigators felt they had caught Alexander Smirnov dead to rights. Yesterday came news that Smirnov has admitted that he got his false stories from Russian intelligence officers. Smirnov isn’t just at the center of the DOJ investigation, he’s at the center of what we have to generously call James Comer’s House inquiry, the premise for Joe Biden’s increasingly wobbly impeachment.
Covered in more detail by TPM's David Kurtz here.
This is blowing up all over. As I'm writing this, NPR is using this as the lead for their news wrap-up. It's the top story on CNN's site.
And the New York Times has Hunter Biden on the front page...
I'm sorry. It appears that the NYT picked this moment to run a not particularly topical or newsworthy story about Hunter's rich friend, but, to be fair, they have run some articles on this widening scandal around the main informant behind the legend of the Biden crime family, one of the defining myths of the 2024 GOP.
In case you're having trouble reading this, the page numbers in chronological order were A11, A15, A16 and A1.
The paper has another story scheduled for tomorrow (no page number as yet). Their Smirnov coverage has become a subject of mockery and they are having their asses handed to them by pretty much everybody. Based on past experience (anybody else remember Pam Bondi?), this is about the time the paper will push the story to the front page, ignoring the work of other organizations and pretending they were in the lead all along.
We'll see.
