Republicans use impeachment inquiry to launder foreign disinformation

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

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

So here’s how Smirnov got his alleged Russian propaganda into the Justice Department.

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

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

And the last part, the one relating to the laundering of foreign disinformation, is the one that should stand out the most. Because it’s nothing new.

After the bombshell revelations that Republican House Speakers James Comer and Jim Jordan were duped by Russian spies into laundering Putin-based lies about President Biden, a picture is emerging of the entire Republican-based impeachment effort 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 failure to do so compromises US national security and could inevitably drag the US in a conflict of troops on the ground to defend our allies.

Already in July, President Comer had made use of an informant who turned out to be an agent of Chinese interests.

Then Comer’s supposedly important FD-1023 form was revealed to be “a tissue of lies” spread by someone with ties to Russian intelligence.

The impeachment inquiry is itself based on nothing, literally a “nothing hamburger,” whose only function appears to be to echo and amplify 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, while Russia planted a trumped-up smear against President Biden, who did all the possible to help Ukraine during the two-year illegal invasion of Russia.

And then House Republicans push Russian lies into the mainstream.

Are they deceived or are they willing? I’m not sure it matters anymore, because they know better and, in any case, spreading Putin’s lies is not what they are paid to do and is antithetical to their job.

But Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) said on CNN’s The Source that Republicans were alerted at the time “that we had received the document reporting the testimony of this witness. … We were warned that the credibility of this statement was not known… And yet, folks, my colleagues went out and talked to the public about how this was credible and how damaging it was and how it demonstrated President Biden’s will – to Vice President Biden’s era: complicity in receiving bribes.”

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

So they are laundering this foreign disinformation through the US House and, at the very least, they are doing so recklessly and without any concern for their own country because they are so obsessed with giving Donald Trump what he wants in an attack on Trump’s likely opponent. Trump in 2024.

Republicans have reviewed testimony from more than 10 people who have repeatedly said there is no evidence that President Biden did anything wrong, tens of thousands of pages of Biden’s bank records, dragged in members of his family, used stolen documents and her children’s items, including a diary and a stolen laptop, they examined 70,000 pages of documents from the National Archives and found nothing except…

…foreign disinformation.

The FBI states: “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.”

Therefore, any person or party pushing a foreign influence campaign into the public sphere by laundering disinformation through public hearings would be helping hostile foreign actors undermine U.S. values.

And in case this sounds biased, while standing up for your country while it’s being attacked by malign actors certainly doesn’t seem like a big ask for elected officials 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 through information warfare, but many in our media pretend not to see the asymmetric nature of those pushing them. Foreign influence is supported primarily by Republican elected officials and is echoed in conservative media.

The call comes from inside the Chamber.

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