The key witness against Joe Biden is a Russian spy. US MPs warn China in Taiwan

Once again, the Grand Old Party offers an opportunity for open gloating: the alleged key witness in the impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden has been arrested as a liar and exposed as a suspected agent in the employ of the Russian secret service. But one after another:

Since Republicans won a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections, they have essentially pursued one goal: imposing impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden. In itself this is a pointless case, because a conviction by the Senate is impossible due to the majority there. But that’s not the point. It’s all about simultaneously avenging and downplaying the two impeachments against Donald Trump.

The Republicans roared into this task, sending out the two worst speakers, Jim Jordan and James Comer. With the support of Fox News and other conservative media, the two jumped into the fray, promising that they would soon convict the “Biden crime family” for their various crimes.

The basis of this campaign was the ‘laptop from hell’, a laptop that Hunter Biden, the president’s son, gave to a computer dealer for repairs, but later never picked up. The dealer in question – a more than shady figure – gained access to the data on the hard drive and came across numerous emails and photos with pornographic content.

You need to know: Hunter Biden was going through a serious crisis at the time, was addicted to drugs and had an unsavory divorce. He is the black sheep of the family, but as we all know, that happens in the best families. In addition, this family in particular has a difficult history. Hunter’s mother and sister died early in a traffic accident, and his older brother died of a brain tumor.

This is tragic, but politically irrelevant. Impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden could only be justified if it can be proven that the president participated financially in his son’s affairs.

The case of Burisma, a natural gas company in Ukraine, was an example of this. Hunter Biden brought him onto the board of directors and paid him $50,000 a month. Clearly this was a bad deal. Hunter Biden is not an energy expert and so far he had only found Ukraine on the map. It was his name alone that earned him this lucrative mandate, as his father was Vice President of the US at the time.

Hunter Biden openly admitted this fact, but at the same time denied that his father knew about it or even benefited financially from it. But this alone would be morally reprehensible and politically fatal. Trump and the Republicans therefore pulled out all the stops to prove exactly this.

First, they sent Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine with the task of obtaining the relevant evidence. The mission initially seemed promising. A video clip surfaced of Joe Biden bragging about firing the then-attorney general of Ukraine. This clip is being hyped as the ultimate proof of the Bidens’ corrupt actions, as the fired attorney general is said to have investigated the Burisma case.

But it would soon become apparent that the man in question was extremely corrupt and that Biden had acted on behalf of his president and the EU. This had nothing to do with his son and Burisma; a fact that several witnesses independently confirmed.

So Giuliani’s mission came to nothing. Instead of the hoped-for evidence of a crime between father and son Biden, the result was impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. The then incumbent president had tried to put pressure on his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky with the infamous ‘perfect’ telephone conversation.

But Republicans didn’t give up, and unexpectedly it seemed to pay off. A certain Alexander Smirnov showed up and said he had a lot of material that would prove that Burisma transferred $5 million each to Biden father and son to avoid an investigation by the Attorney General’s office.

The now 43-year-old Israeli-American dual citizen seemed credible. He speaks fluent Russian, is believed to be from Ukraine and in the past regularly gave tips to the FBI, for which he was handsomely paid. Nothing more is known about Smirnov.

Republicans and Fox News were thrilled. Sean Hannity mentioned the witness beyond reasonable doubt more than 80 times in his monologues. Comer and Jordan told anyone who would listen that the testimony of this key witness was the centerpiece of the planned impeachment of the president.

The Republicans’ enthusiasm was understandable. They had previously suffered a shipwreck with another key witness. He had promised to provide alleged evidence of the Bidens’ unfair dealings with China, but unexpectedly disappeared from the scene. Comer then had to meekly admit that criminal proceedings were underway against this man for illegal arms trade with China.

Now the second key witness has also failed. Special investigator David Weiss – who was appointed by Trump as prosecutor to handle Hunter Biden’s case – had him arrested last week on suspicion of making false statements. It turned out that Smirnov had contacts with the Russian secret service.

After this second major embarrassment, you would expect Republicans and the conservative media to actively repent to maintain at least a modicum of credibility. The opposite is the case. Sean Hannity doesn’t say a word about the arrest of his key witness. Jessie Walter, a calf-biter who should make Tucker Carlson forget, even goes so far as to theorize that a diabolically sophisticated plan by Biden is behind Smirnow’s arrest. However, how he wants to reconcile this with the president’s alleged dementia remains his secret.

Comer and Jordan, on the other hand, appear to have drunk hectoliters of Ovaltine. They can’t do it better, but they can do it for a long time. That’s why they want to move forward undeterred and move the impeachment process forward. The next setback was not long in coming. James Biden, the president’s brother, who is also accused of being part of the “crime family,” testified at a hearing yesterday: “Joe Biden has never had any direct or indirect financial relationship with my companies. Never.”

But be careful: we shouldn’t wallow in gloating. You can’t stop laughing at yet another embarrassing flop of the Republicans when you consider that former KGB agent Vladimir Putin almost pulled off his biggest coup: If Smirnov had not been exposed at the last minute, it would have been the Russian secret service This time they managed to decisively manipulate the American elections – and that is anything but funny.