Repreresentive Ken Buck (R-CO) claimed Wednesday on CNN’s “The Source” that Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) were warned that Alexander Smirnov, charged with lying to the FBI, had a story that could not be corroborated.
Partial transcript as follows:
COLLINS: Looking at what you said last September, you were condemning your own party’s impeachment efforts, saying that ‘Republicans in the House who are itching for an impeachment are relying on an imagined history.’ Did you ever think that it would collapse and this spectacular of a fashion
BUCK: Well, Kaitlan, it’s even more of an imagined history now. Obviously, this witness – and we were 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. It appears to absolutely be false and to really undercut the nature of the charges. We’ve always been looking for a link between what Hunter Biden received in terms of money and Joe Biden’s activities or Joe Biden receiving money. This clearly is not a credible link at this point.
COLLINS: So, James Comer and Jim Jordan – they knew that this was not corroborated information, yet they still went public with it, talked about it on television, used it to fuel these investigations regardless?
BUCK: That’s what it appears. I certainly didn’t have any evidence outside the statement itself that it was credible. And as a prosecutor for 25 years, Kaitlan, I never went to the public until I could prove the reliability of a statement. And even then, the only one public statement a prosecutor makes is the charging document. Let’s see what the evidence is in this impeachment, if there is more evidence before going forward.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN