Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said the plight of Alexander Smirnov, the FBI informant charged with lying to the agency, does not affect the impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden, CNN reported Wednesday.
Smirnov was charged with making up a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme, alleging that Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and a Ukrainian energy company had contacts with officials affiliated with Russian intelligence, prosecutors said in a court paper Tuesday.
Smirnov was charged with falsely reporting to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter Biden and Joe Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016.
The claim has been central to Republicans' impeachment inquiry in Congress.
Jordan, House Judiciary Chairman, argued that Smirnov being discredited does not change four core facts of the case, the first of which is that "Hunter Biden was put on the board of Burisma and gets paid a million dollars a year. Fact number two, he's not qualified to be on the board," Mediaite cited CNN as reporting.
Jordan added: "Burisma specifically asked Hunter Biden, 'Can you weigh in with D.C. and help us deal with the pressure we are facing from the prosecutor ... [and then] Hunter Biden calls his dad, according to [his business partner] Devon Archer."
Jordan told CNN that the fourth fact is that "Joe Biden goes to Ukraine three days later and conditions the release of the money, American tax money, on the firing of the prosecutor who was applying the pressure to the company that Hunter Biden sat on the board of.”
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., added that "we have lots of evidence" other than what Smirnov provided, according to a post on X by CNN's Annie Grayer.
Grayer added in the tweet, however, that the "GOP deleted reference to the informant from a recent letter to a witness."
The Department of Justice alleged in a court filing Tuesday that Smirnov counts among his contacts high-level operatives in Russian intelligence.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.