The recent news that the Department of Justice indicted an FBI informant for lying about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings may not be an expected boon for Biden’s reelection campaign.
Alexander Smirnov was charged with two counts of making false statements on Thursday as part of special counsel David Weiss’s investigation. Smirnov alleged in 2020 that officials with Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, paid the Biden pair $5 million each while Biden served as vice president.
He also alleged Hunter Biden was hired to use his father to protect the Burisma officials from “all kinds of problems.”
The news prompted several Democrats to come to Joe Biden’s defense by slamming the Republican-led impeachment inquiry led by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY).
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member on the Oversight Committee, called for the end of the Biden impeachment investigation and slammed Comer, who repeatedly pointed to Smirnov’s allegations as cause for the inquiry.
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“In a detailed indictment, Special Counsel David Weiss—who was appointed by former President Donald Trump—has demonstrated how key evidence at the heart of House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry is based on a lie,” Raskin said in a statement.
“It is an undeniable fact that Republicans’ allegations against President Biden have always been a tissue of lies built on conspiracy theories,” he continued. “And I formally call on Speaker Johnson, Chairman Comer, and House Republicans to stop promoting this nonsense and end their doomed impeachment inquiry.”
On Friday afternoon, Biden echoed Raskin’s comments when he too called for the end of the inquiry. “He is lying, and it should be dropped,” Biden said during a speech at the White House. “It’s been an outrageous effort from the beginning.”
But after months of coverage on the inquiry and a revealing report from special counsel Robert Hur that prompted alarm over Biden’s mental acuity, it may not make much of a difference in changing the current trajectory of the 2024 race, experts said.
Frank Bowman, professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law, previously cast doubt on Smirnov’s accusations that Joe and Hunter Biden received $5 million each from Burisma officials when Joe Biden was vice president in a post for the online forum Just Security in December.
Congressional Republicans pointed to an FBI document in July in which an informant alleged a criminal bribery scheme between Joe Biden as a prime basis for launching the investigation into the president.
“I said months ago that first of all, this was pretty darn flimsy stuff on which to base any kind of inquiry given that it was a single anonymous source interview to the FBI,” Bowman said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “Does this undercut Republicans’ effort to try to do an impeachment investigation of the president? And of course it does; at least it would in a rational world.”
Bowman also claimed that most voters may not pay attention to the recent impeachment news but that Republicans have succeeded in painting Joe Biden in a negative light.
“The odds are decent they won’t even be able to impeach him because what matters is that they’re just generally dirtying him up,” he said. “They’re basically associating Joe Biden with the, to say the least, bad choices of his son and his son’s undoubted years of basically trying to make a buck off his dad’s name.”
Meena Bose, executive dean at Hofstra University and a presidential historian, was similarly skeptical that the indictment news would help Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.
“It’s not clear whether this will move the needle politically for President Biden’s reelection campaign. I think certainly it addresses the legal issue here with the impeachment inquiry,” Bose said. “And that’s obviously important for President Biden and then for his son’s legal cases.”
Voters appeared to be split on their approval of the Biden investigation. A mid-December NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll showed 49% of people were in support of the impeachment inquiry, while 48% disapproved of the investigation.
One Democratic strategist told the Washington Examiner that the FBI informant’s indictment was unsurprising, pointing to GOP fearmongering.
“But I do fear that because they have been so successful in their constant ramblings on about fraud and electioneering and things that it might fall on some deaf ears certainly in the more conservative side of the country,” said Randy Jones, the Democratic strategist.
Jay Townsend, a nonpartisan political consultant based in New York City, claimed that Comer’s reliance on the FBI informant was unwise.
“It’s been a really, really bad week in a bad month for the House GOP,” Townsend said of the House GOP’s recent setbacks to passing legislation or winning a special election in New York. “It’s an embarrassment. It’s another dent in the brand of the GOP that they can’t get anything done.”
A representative for Comer’s office did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
Comer said previously the impeachment inquiry would proceed despite the FBI’s indictment.
“To be clear, the impeachment inquiry is not reliant on the FBI’s FD-1023,” Comer said. “It is based on a large record of evidence, including bank records and witness testimony, revealing that Joe Biden knew of and participated in his family’s business dealings.”
However, a Republican strategist rebuffed criticisms of the GOP investigation, citing Joe Biden’s struggles with his mental acuity.
“This in no way vindicates Biden,” said Gregg Keller, a Republican consultant based in Missouri. “Any day that this story is in the news is a bad day for the Biden administration. I think the reason this is important is that Democrats are now searching for reasons, opportunities, and excuses to get Joe Biden off the ticket because of his mental deterioration, which has become so profiled that they can’t ignore it anymore.”
Joe Biden has faced increasing scrutiny over his capability to govern after the Hur report raised alarming examples of the president failing to remember the year his son Beau died and his tenure as vice president. News coverage of the report overshadowed much of Joe Biden’s reelection efforts.
Yet, Democratic strategist Brad Bannon brushed off comments that Joe Biden’s reelection campaign may not benefit from the news the informant was lying.
“I think it’s a big advantage because I think it helps remove a cloud over the Biden candidacy,” Bannon said. “And more importantly, it makes it easier for the president to go after Trump for his many legal failings.”
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Joe Biden’s reelection campaign did not respond to a Washington Examiner request for comment. Bose, the presidential historian, suggested the campaign’s quietness on the issue is strategic.
“Although the president’s team will certainly argue that this is a vindication, it’s not really an issue that I think they’re eager to have in the news,” Bose said. “I think the effort on the part of the president’s team is to really kind of bring this inquiry to a quick closure.”
