Republicans Are Using Impeachment Inquiry to Launder Foreign Disinformation

After House Republican’s star witness was accused of having ties with Russian intelligence, House Judiciary Ranking Member Jerry Nadler wrote an official letter requesting AG Garland and IG Horowitz to investigate former U.S. Attorney Scott Brady as he appears “to have been part of a deliberate attempt to launder foreign disinformation through the Department of Justice.”

Brady testified on October 23, 2023 that he had “vetted and found credible statements made by a confidential human source (CHS), now identified as Alexander Smirnov.”

So he’s how Smirnov got his alleged Russian-propaganda pushed into the DOJ.

Nadler requested the investigation “for what appears to be misleading testimony provided to the House Judiciary Committee. I also ask that you launch an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Mr. Brady’s investigation of matters related to Ukraine and Hunter Biden.

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“During his interview, Mr. Brady stated that he directed the FBI to conduct the June 2020 interview with Mr. Smirnov, who is alleged to have ties to Russian intelligence despite reluctance from FBI agents handling the matter,” the Ranking Democrat wrote. “If true, then Mr. Brady appears to have been part of a deliberate attempt to launder foreign disinformation through the Department of Justice.”

And that last part, the part about laundering foreign disinformation, that’s the part that should stick out for people. Because it’s not new.

After the bombshell revelations that House Republican Chairs James Comer and Jim Jordan were duped by Russian spies into laundering Putin-based lies about President Biden, a picture is coming together about the entire Republican based impeachment project against Biden being used to launder foreign disinformation.

This is especially pertinent as this same body refuses to fund aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s illegal invasion, at a time when to fail to do so compromises U.S. national security and could well inevitably draw the U.S. into a troops on the ground conflict to defend our allies.

Back in July, Chairman Comer used a whistleblower who turned out to be an agent for Chinese interests.

Then Comer’s supposed deeply important Form FD-1023 turned out to be “a tissue of lies” pushed by someone with ties to Russian intelligence.

The impeachment inquiry is itself based on nothing, a literal nothingburger, the only function of which appears to be echoing and amplifying foreign disinformation.

Right wing media hero Tucker Carlson interviewed Putin last week, amplifying his historical distortions and talking points to a receptive right wing audience, as Russia planted a fabricated smear against President Biden, who has been doing all he can to help Ukraine during the two years of Russia’s illegal invasion.

And then House Republicans push the Russian lies into the mainstream.

Are they duped or are they willing? I’m not sure it matters anymore, because they do know better and at any rate, pushing Putin’s lies is not what they are paid for and is antithetical to their job.

But Representative Ken Buck (R-CO) said on CNN’s The Source that Republicans had been 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.”

And Nadler is saying Brady’s behavior appears to be a “deliberate attempt to launder foreign disinformation through the Department of Justice.”

So they are laundering this foreign disinformation through the U.S. House and at the very least, they do so recklessly and with no concern for their own country because they are so obsessed with giving Donald Trump what he wants in an attack on Trump’s likely 2024 opponent.

Republicans have gone through witness testimony from more than 10 people who have repeatedly said there is no evidence of President Biden doing anything wrong, tens of thousands of pages of Biden’s bank records, they’ve dragged in his family members, they’ve utilized stolen items from his kids, including a diary and a stolen laptop, they’ve gone through 70,000 pages of documents from the National Archives, and they’ve got nothing except…

… foreign disinformation.

The FBI says, “The goal of these foreign influence operations directed against the United States is to spread disinformation, sow discord, and, ultimately, undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and values.”

So, then, any person or any party pushing foreign influence campaign into the public sphere by laundering the misinformation and disinformation via public hearings would be helping hostile foreign actors to undermine U.S. values.

And in case this seems partisan, though siding with one’s own country as it’s being attacked by malign actors hardly seems like a big ask for elected Representatives and presidential candidates, last month Iran began shipping hundreds of ballistic missiles to Russia, according to Reuters.

In better times, perhaps we would have a unified response to hostile foreign powers attempting to undermine the United States via information warfare, but many in our media pretend not to see the asymmetrical nature of who is pushing them. The foreign influence is being mostly being pushed by Republican elected officials and echoed by conservative media.

The call is coming from inside the House.

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