Key Republican source who lied to the FBI about the Bidens receives prison sentence: Alexander Smirnov may not be a household name, but his prison sentence represents a stunning fiasco for some prominent Republicans in Congress.

The just-completed 118th Congress was an embarrassment for a great many reasons, including the fact that the House Republican majority formally launched an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden without cause. As we’ve discussed, the misguided crusade was rooted in a scurrilous accusation: The Democrat, GOP officials claimed, was the beneficiary of a weird Ukrainian bribery scheme......

Whatever became of that informant? As The Associated Press reported, he’s now headed to prison.

A former FBI informant who fabricated a story about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter accepting bribes that became central to Republicans’ impeachment effort was sentenced Wednesday to six years in prison. Alexander Smirnov pleaded guilty last month in Los Angeles federal court to tax evasion and lying to the FBI about the phony bribery scheme in what prosecutors say was an effort to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

I’m mindful of the fact that Smirnov is not exactly a household name, and this story probably won’t appear on the front pages of many newspapers, but the developments represent a stunning fiasco for some prominent GOP lawmakers......

Ideally, this should open the door to some congressional accountability. Rep. Jim Jordan, for example, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is on record publicly declaring that he was relying largely on Smirnov’s claims as part of his pursuit of Biden. The Ohio Republican specifically told Fox News last year that the allegations raised by Smirnov represented “the heart” of the GOP’s case against the incumbent president.

Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the GOP chair of the House Oversight Committee, made similar comments, declaring last year that Smirnov’s claims were “a very crucial piece of our investigation.”

At least one House Republican conceded that the party was warned not to take these uncorroborated anti-Biden allegations seriously, but Jordan and Comer, among others, ignored the advice and ran with the claims that have since collapsed.

In the GOP’s impeachment crusade, the real “scandal” isn’t what Joe Biden did, it’s what his accusers did.