Last week, the "whistleblower" that House Republicans were counting on to justify a long-planned impeachment of Joe Biden was arrested for lying to the FBI. In a twist that should surprise exactly no one, it appears almost certain that Alexander Smirnov's claim to have evidence implicating the president and his son, Hunter, in criminal activity was fabricated. Worse yet, it also seems plausible that the "source" of the lies was Russian intelligence services. House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., had built the effort to impeach Biden around Smirnov's invented testimony, and has now tacitly admitted that this arrest may derail the Biden impeachment, which has been in the works since long before Republicans had even decided what "crime" they would pretend to believe Biden committed.
In the wake of Smirnov's arrest, a narrative has surfaced among the punditry holding that Comer and other Republicans who championed Smirnov's fictions must be a bunch of morons. Joe Scarborough of MNBC, the bellwether of centrist Beltway thinking, unleashed on Wednesday morning about "Republicans being played once again by Vladimir Putin," adding that "Republicans are so stupid in the House, they can feed Russian disinformation straight into the veins of the United States Congress." Other outlets have been less aggressive with the name-calling, while still running with the assumption that Comer must be embarrassed to be exposed as a laundromat for Kremlin propaganda. Even legal blogger Marcy Wheeler, who tends to be bullish on Russian connections to Trump-friendly politicians, ran with the "dupes" narrative.
