Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) says House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-KY.) were warned that the former FBI informant claims about the Bidens Ukraine ties were uncorroborated, but they decided to run with it anyway.
“It’s even more of an imagined history now,” Buck told host Kaitlan Collins during an interview on CNN’s The Source Wednesday, according to a clip highlighted by Mediaite. “Obviously, this witness – and we were warned at the time that we received the document outlining this witness’s testimony – we were warned that the credibility of this statement was not known.”
“And yet people, my colleagues went out and talk to the public about how this was credible and how it was damning and how it proved President Biden’s – at the time Vice President Biden’s – complicity in receiving bribes,” Buck continued. “It appears to absolutely be false and to really undercut the nature of the charges.”
Alexander Smirnov was arrested last week and charged with lying to the FBI after he told the bureau in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each. Smirnov claim the payment was a bribe to get the elder Biden, who was serving as vice-president at the time, to fire a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma while Hunter was on the board.
Smirnov later admitted in an interview with prosecutors after his arrest that he received information from Russian intelligence officials about Hunter.
The revelation dealt a massive blow to House Republicans impeachment inquiry which is centered around Smirnov’s now debunked claim.
Smirnov’s original claim was documented in a FD-1023 form which Comer, several other Republicans and right-wing media outlets touted as damning evidence of Biden’s alleged corruption from a “credible source.”
However, Buck, a prosecutor for 25 years, told CNN that Republicans “certainly didn’t have any evidence outside the statement itself that it was credible.”
“I never went to the public until I could prove the reliability of a statement,” he continued. “And even then, the only one public statement a prosecutor makes is the charging document. Let’s see what the evidence is in this impeachment, if there is more evidence before going forward.”
Last year Buck slammed House Republicans impeachment effort, telling the Washington Post, “Republicans in the House who are itching for an impeachment are relying on an imagined history.”
