Growing Evidence of Communist Influence in the Republican Impeachment Investigation
From the beginning the Republican impeachment investigation has been a sham aimed at influencing the 2024 election. It has now failed miserably. That failure is culminating in growing evidence that the investigation was pushed by Russian and Chinese agents and that key Republicans were either willing participants in that, or incredibly gullible dupes. Further, there is growing evidence that both the Russian and Chinese agents involved were connected to Donald Trump.
Gal Luft: The Case of the Chinese Spy
Last May, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer was pushing a man named Gal Luft, and his testimony, as central to the investigation of Biden corruption. Comer advised Americans that Luft was one of their key secret “whistleblowers” and his allegations the Bidens got money from a Chinese energy company were “very credible.”
Things began to unravel when Republicans were forced to admit they could not find Luft to, you know, actually testify. In fact, they admitted their “very credible” whistleblower had never talked to them face to face at all, that they had never actually met him. Unable to find him Republicans couched it in conspiratorial terms suggesting Democrats had somehow gotten to him and encouraged him to go into hiding. In short, they insinuated Democrats had engaged in witness tampering.
As it turns out, Luft was indeed in hiding, from the Department of Justice. Last July the DOJ unsealed an indictment of Mr. Luft charging him with being an unregistered Chinese agent and illegally arranging oil sales, in violations of sanctions against Iran, along with illegal arms sales. The Republican star witness couldn’t be found because he was on the lam.
Republicans feigned outrage, suggesting the indictment was a Biden Administration ploy to silence their star witness. “I don’t trust the DOJ or the FBI. They are trying to silence our witnesses,” declared Representative Nancy Mace (R-S.C.). “The timing is always coincidental, according to the Democrats and the Department of Justice,” whined Oversight Committee Chairman Comer.
Alas, that whole timing argument turned against their allegations. The discerning may have noted I emphasized “unsealed” above. That’s because the indictment was actually filed on November, 1, 2022.
On November 1, 2022, Democrats controlled the House, there was no impeachment inquiry.
In February 2023 Luft was arrested in Cyprus on these charges. In March he jumped bail and since then his whereabouts are unknown. The entire time Republicans were dealing with this guy, he was a fugitive. An explanation for how the Republicans came to be talking to a fugitive from justice has never been offered. To this day, the DOJ website regarding Luft states:
If you have any information about LUFT’s whereabouts, please contact your local FBI office or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate. Tips can be reported anonymously and can also be reported online at tips.fbi.gov.
So the potential real scandal here has nothing to do with the Bidens. It has to do with whether Republicans involved in Biden’s impeachment inquiry were protecting a felony fugitive and Chinese spy. Of course, we haven’t gotten to the Chinese spy connection yet, and how it connects to Donald Trump. Time to do so.
I mentioned that the charges against Luft included being a “Chinese agent.” The Chinese agent charge includes recruiting and paying a former high ranking, U.S. Government official, on behalf of China. This payment occurred while the American official was an advisor to the President-elect Donald Trump. The payment occurred in December 2015 and was for the purpose of influencing the soon-to-be President’s policies towards China.
The high ranking former official is former CIA Director James Woolsey, who served as the National Security Advisor to Trump’s 2016 Campaign. Luft is accused of arranging a Chinese bribe of the Trump Administration to influence Trump’s policy towards China. Trump, and Republicans who reguarly accuse the Bidens of being influenced by China, refuse to address this, though it has the charm of actual evidence presented to and endorsed by a grand jury.
To summarize, the Former Director of the CIA, while working as President-elect Trump’s National Security Advisor, accepted a bribe from China intended to influence the Trump Administration towards favorable policies for China. The Chinese agent who made this bribe was a key witness for the Republican impeachment inquiry with Republicans absurdly making allegations of the DOJ trying to silence him by indicting him long before the impeachment inquiry even started.
Alexander Smirnov: The Case of the Russian Spy
Alexander Smirnov was a star witness in the Republican efforts to impeach Joe Biden. Smirnov, a former business partner with Hunter Biden, became a “confidential human source” for the FBI.
Smirnov is the guy who told FBI agents that Burisma officials admitted to him they hired Hunter to protect protect the company, “through his dad, from all kinds of problems.” He told FBI agents that Burisma executives paid $5 million to Joe and Hunter Biden, when Biden was Vice President, to protect the company from investigations. Smirnov told the FBI he had a phone call with a Burisma executive, in which the executive claimed he’d been “forced” to pay alleged bribes to the Bidens.
Republicans pounced on it. Smirnov’s claims were memorialized by the FBI agents on a Form 1023, a common form used by FBI agents to summarize witness interviews, whether the information is accurate or not. Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley got the 1023 and illegally leaked it to the press.
It’s difficult to convey how thoroughly Republicans relied on Smirnov’s claim that Joe Biden was paid $5 million in 2016 to get a Russian prosecutor fired who was supposedly (but not really) investigating, Burisma, the Ukrainian company Hunter Biden worked for.
Jim Jordan declared it “really the heart of this matter.” He described it as “the most corroborating evidence we have.” Chuck Grassley touted it as proof of “Biden family influence peddling.” Upon reading it, Representative Anna Paulina declared Biden “100% guilty” of bribery. In what should now be viewed a reflection of her own credibility, Marjorie Taylor Green declared this witness as “extremely credible” and presented his FBI interviews as absolute proof:
“This is an impeachable document. President Biden should be impeached. Secondly, he should be prosecuted. This is unbelievable. It’s a pay-to-play scheme. He took a bribe from a from a foreign national in a foreign country that paid millions of dollars. He needs to be prosecuted for this, and I would argue that he should serve jail time. If we were not politically divided, if we were the United States that used to exist, that is righteous and just, if we were a just nation, Joe Biden would be impeached. No one could argue with this. Democrat or Republican, I would say no one can argue with it now.”
That’s how deeply invested Republicans were into what are now revealed to be nothing short of Russian intelligence driven lies.
On February 14, 2024 the Department of Justice indicted Alexander Smirnov charging him with lying to the FBI about all those allegations about the Bidens. What’s more, the FBI alleged the ultimate source of those lies was Russian intelligence and that Smirnov was acting on their bidding.
In the blunt words of a motion to keep Smirnov in jail pending trial: “The events Smirnov first reported to the [FBI’s] Handler in June 2020 were fabrications.” In fact, Smirnov never met with, or talked to, any Burisma representatives until 2017, after Joe Biden had gotten the do nothing Ukrainian prosecutor fired, and after Joe Biden was no longer even in office and capable of protecting anyone from anything. Smirnov claims at least one of these meetings occurred when he traveled to Vienna and met with the Burisma officials in a cafe. Alas, prosecutors have proof that Smirnov never travelled to Vienna.
For a decade Smirnov was a valued confidential human source because he had connections to Russian intelligence officials, including “a high-ranking member of a specific Russian foreign intelligence service.” His meetings included another Russian official “who controls groups that are engaged in overseas assassination efforts.” The motion makes clear that Smirnov used his extensive Russian contacts to try to frame Joe Biden to influence the 2024 election.
Smirnov met with yet another Russian intelligence official who Smirnov claimed told him Russian intelligence had intercepted calls made at a Ukrainian hotel made by prominent Americans. Smirnov told the FBI the Russian intelligence officer said they thereby gathered information the Russians planned to use as “kompromat in the 2024 election, depending on who the candidates will be.” Smirnov suggested one of the hotel’s users, so kompromatted, was Hunter Biden. The next five plus pages detail Smirnov’s extensive contacts with Russian agents.
Smirnov told prosecutors Hunter Biden went to this hotel in Kiev “many times” and that he had personally seen recordings of Biden entering and leaving the hotel as the Russians had the hotel “wired.” Smirnov suggested the Russians had recorded calls Hunter Biden made while at the hotel. According to Smirnov, the Russians intelligence officers told him they seek to influence the 2024 Presidential elections, through Ukraine, by using the tapes they recorded of Hunter Biden while at this hotel.
The huge problem with this is that Hunter Biden has never travelled to Ukraine. You might think Hunter had to go to Ukraine, being on the Board of Burisma and all. Apparently Smirnov thought that, too. However, according to the indictment, Hunter Biden never travelled to Ukraine and the few Burisma Board meeting he did attend “were all outside of Ukraine.”
The prosecutors make clear:
“Smirnov’s contacts with Russian officials who are affiliated with Russian intelligence services are not benign . . . Smirnov’s efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States continues . . . the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020. He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.”
For a months now I believed the real scandal here boiled down to a simple question. For how long have Republicans who pushed Smirnov as the smoking gun in their impeachment inquiry known that he was a Russian agent, and that his allegations were concocted by Russian intelligence services? However today the scandal got deeper with evidence that Smirnov was paid by agents of Donald Trump.
The new evidence comes in a blockbuster article by the The Guardian. Even as Smirnov was telling his lies to the FBI Trump business associates in Dubai were paying Smirnov $600,000. This is not a seven degrees of separation sort of thing. It’s a tight circle of people around Trump, that Trump has himself described as friends or as a “great man” and who are closely linked to Paul Manafort. Trump acknowledges making millions from deals with these people.
The Guardian does not allege the $600,000 is tied to the lies Smirnov told the FBI but surely this is worth investigating. In the words of Nancy Mace, “The timing is always coincidental.”
Election Meddling
This entire impeachment inquiry was election meddling, but it appeared to be mostly internal to disgusting domestic politics election meddling. Now growing evidence suggests the impeachment inquiry was the product of Chinese and Russian election meddling that the Republican Party supported.
