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This is an adapted excerpt from the Dec. 16 episode of “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
On Monday, in a courtroom in Los Angeles, one of the most spectacular debacles of the current Congress came to an embarrassing and pitiful conclusion. You may or may not have been following every twist and turn of it, but Republicans really did spend over a year attempting to impeach President Joe Biden.
At the heart of this impeachment effort was a star witness, a man Republicans claimed was their smoking gun: Alexander Smirnov, an FBI informant who supposedly had the evidence that Biden had taken bribes and that a Ukrainian energy company had paid millions of dollars to the president and his son.
You won’t be shocked to learn that this story isn’t getting a lot of play in the right-wing media, which helped hype the Biden bribery allegations for over a year.
But problem No. 1 for the Republicans happened when that guy, their star witness against Biden, was arrested on charges that he lied to the FBI about those bribery allegations.Then came problem two for the Republicans. According to the indictment, Smirnov claimed that some of the information he passed on was information he got from Russian intelligence officials.
On Monday, problem three arrived when Smirnov pleaded guilty to a felony charge of lying to the FBI about the phony bribery scheme. He likely faces four to six years in prison.
And yet, you won’t be shocked to learn that this story isn’t getting a lot of play in the right-wing media, which helped hype the Biden bribery allegations for over a year. You also won’t be shocked to learn that Republican lawmakers don’t appear at all chastened by this outcome. Just last week, the incoming Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, was still citing Smirnov’s nonsense allegations.
It’s a spectacular debacle for Republicans that has finally come to an embarrassing close — except nothing is ever really closed for these guys.
Allison Detzel contributed.