A Biden accuser was discredited; right-wing media is undeterred
A few hours after the credibility of a key source boosting Republican efforts to impeach President Joe Biden collapsed in spectacular fashion Tuesday, Fox News host Jesse Watters offered a reassuring message.
“It's a smear job,” Watters said.
He was referring to the revelation by the Justice Department that Alexander Smirnov, an FBI informant who had accused Biden and his son Hunter of an elaborate bribery scheme involving Ukraine, was in fact a serial liar who could not be trusted. In a court filing, federal prosecutors said Smirnov had spread misinformation and was “actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials.”
Because Smirnov's claims were frequently cited by congressional Republicans in their now-stalled attempt to unseat Biden from office, Democrats argued that the impeachment effort had reached a logical conclusion.
“He is lying and it should be dropped and it's just been an outrageous effort from the beginning,” the president said last week.
But the conservative media reacted with a different, and sharply defiant, narrative. In this worldview, news of Smirnov's deceptions was merely part of a conspiracy to protect Biden at all costs.
“They say he has ties to Russian intelligence; where did they get that from?” Watters told his primetime audience, noting that Smirnov had previously been considered credible by the FBI. “They just gave the media and the Democrats permission to call the Ukraine bribes and the Biden impeachment `Russian disinformation' for the rest of the year.”
Miranda Devine, a columnist for The New York Post, dismissed Smirnov as a “straw man” and said the evidence against Biden remained “overwhelming.” Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business described the Justice Department's filing as “an intimidation tactic” and accused the government of “taking this guy down.”
At partisan media outlets, it is standard procedure to present new facts with a topspin that likeminded audiences may find sympathetic. The reaction to Smirnov offered a case study of how rightwing commentators could ignore or reinterpret information that might be beneficial to Biden, or detrimental to the political prospects of former President Donald Trump. The Washington Examiner, an online outlet, published what it called a fact check that found the Republican impeachment inquiry “was based on far more than the bribery claim Smirnov made,” apparently referring to witness testimony and subpoenaed bank records — none of which, to date, have revealed any conclusive evidence of corruption. The Examiner said, “Smirnov was not a key witness in the GOP impeachment inquiry,” even though his claims had repeatedly been cited by leading conservative officials and commentators.
Some sought to reframe the subject, attacking the government's handling of Smirnov, a handsomely paid informant who now says he was secretly communicating with the Kremlin under the FBI's nose for years. “The GOP's Biden probe doesn't sink or swim on the bribery claims,” wrote Kimberley Strassel, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal's opinion section. “Garbage in is garbage out. But it's the FBI that ought to have to explain the steaming pile of trash.”
Fox News' Jeanine Pirro addressed the matter on “Hannity” on Thursday.
“You've got this guy Smirnov who was a respected confidential informant for 10 years by the FBI,” she said. “They paid him money, he was so credible. Now, all of a sudden, a couple months ago, they decide, `Oh, he's not credible,' because he's claiming that, you know, Joe Biden and Hunter Biden were engaged in a problem.”