The FBI informant James Comer relied upon has pleaded guilty to lying about President Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

Are we gonna hear an apology from Comer Pyle for repeatedly lying to the American people based on bunk propaganda or nah?

It’s easy to forget why, exactly, many House Republicans talked about trying to impeach President Joe Biden earlier this year, but the weird crusade was rooted in a scurrilous accusation: The Democrat, GOP officials claimed, was the beneficiary of a weird Ukrainian bribery scheme.

The story never really made any sense, but several congressional Republicans nevertheless took the claims seriously — and when pressed to justify their efforts, they pointed to an informant who brought the bribery allegations to the attention of the FBI.

Whatever became of that informant? I’m glad you asked. The New York Times reported:

A former F.B.I. informant accused of fabricating a claim that President Biden and his son Hunter were each paid a $5 million bribe by a Ukrainian oligarch has agreed to plead guilty to a range of federal charges, according to a court filing on Thursday. Alexander Smirnov, a profiteer, fixer and gossip based in Las Vegas, reached a deal with the special counsel overseeing the investigation into Hunter Biden, David C. Weiss, that could lead to 48 to 72 months in prison, according to the filing in federal court in California.

The trouble began in earnest in February when Smirnov was indicted for providing “false derogatory information” to the FBI about Biden and his son. The charges stemmed from the special counsel investigation led by David Weiss, a Trump-appointed prosecutor......

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 in January that the allegations raised by Smirnov represented “the heart” of the GOP’s case against the 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.

While Smirnov’s identity wasn’t publicly known before the indictment, his claims played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. Before Smirnov’s arrest, Republicans had demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm whether they were true. The impeachment effort ultimately fizzled out.

During a September 2023 conversation with investigators, Smirnov also claimed the Russians probably had recordings of Hunter Biden because a hotel in Ukraine’s capital where he had stayed was “wired” and under their control — information he said was passed along to him by four high-level Russian officials.

But Hunter Biden had never traveled to Ukraine, according to Smirnov’s indictment.

Smirnov claimed to have contacts with Russian intelligence-affiliated officials, and told authorities after his arrest this year that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.