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Until last month, House Republicans referred to information provided by a "highly credible" FBI informant as the core of their case to impeach President Biden. This week, they quietly deleted any mention of that source from official documents. This one small move speaks volumes about an ill-founded GOP crusade that seems finally to be reaching an embarrassing denouement.
Special counsel David Weiss -- the man in charge of the Justice Department's criminal case against Hunter Biden -- last week filed charges against Alexander Smirnov. The 43-year-old U.S.-Israeli citizen, prosecutors say, lied to federal investigators about the Biden family's business dealings. These lies, crucially, included claims that the president and his son each sought $5 million bribes from Ukrainian energy company Burisma when Mr. Biden was vice president, in exchange for protecting the firm from scrutiny by Ukraine's national authorities. Now, Mr. Smirnov has also disclosed that "officials associated with Russian intelligence" fed him his information.
Might Mr. Smirnov also be lying about Russian officials providing him with dirt on the president? Absolutely. But that is the point. Either Mr. Smirnov is an asset in a current Kremlin plot to spread disinformation about the president, an eerie echo of 2016's election interference, or he is dissembling about that, too. Either way, congressional Republicans have staked their impeachment inquiry on the words of a fabulist.
This turn of events is devastating for the Republican effort to oust the president, given how heavily the politicians orchestrating it have leaned on Mr. Smirnov's claims. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), partnering with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), sent a letter to the Justice Department in May demanding it release a key document that could reveal a "criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden ... involving an exchange of money for policy decisions."
The House Republicans' impeachment quest has never been credible. Payments from son to father supposedly from Chinese businessmen looking to buy influence have turned out to be reimbursements -- the father loaned his son money to buy a Ford Raptor truck because his bad credit precluded financing, nearly two years after he left the vice presidency. Similarly, a much-ballyhooed personal check to Joe Biden from his brother James Biden obtained by Mr. Comer's committee turned out to be another repayment, offered when Joe Biden was neither a government official nor a candidate.
After authorizing their inquiry in December, Republicans could abandon it before summer -- holding out hope before then that closed-door interviews with James Biden and Hunter Biden will turn up the proof of wrongdoing that so far has failed to materialize. Giving up is the right answer. The Justice Department's case against Hunter Biden for federal tax crimes as well as falsifying paperwork on a gun purchase might be strong. But Congress's attempt to punish President Biden for Hunter Biden's poor decisions was always weak. Now, it has utterly collapsed.
* Guest editorial excerpt by The Washington Post.