Guess What Just Disappeared From GOP’s Biden Impeachment Website

House Oversight Republicans have yanked a reference to their major flop of an FBI informant on the committee website, where it previously had pride of place as part of the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.

Republicans have hinged their Biden investigation on accusations from a supposedly credible but confidential FBI source that Biden and his son Hunter accepted bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch. But the Justice Department has since charged that source, former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, with making false statements and revealed his accusation may have been Russian disinformation.

As of Thursday, the House Oversight website displays a list of key evidence in the committee’s Biden family investigation, including an error-ridden timeline of the president’s supposed corruption, the family’s bank records, and a transcribed interview with a witness who actually debunked all of the Republicans’ claims.

But an archived version of the website shows the key evidence list used to include a link to “FBI Form 1023 alleging then-Vice President Joe Biden engaged in a bribery and extortion scheme and ultimately received $5 million from a Burisma executive.”

FD-1023s are forms that the FBI uses to record anonymously sourced, unverified information. The form in question alleges that a source reported Biden and his son Hunter each accepted a $5 million bribe from an executive at Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter served.

Republicans have repeatedly cited this form as concrete proof that Biden is guilty of corruption, despite the fact that the FBI could not prove the information was credible. GOP leadership was warned as much, but it still pushed forward with the investigation into the Bidens.

As it turns out, the story was totally made up. Last week, the Justice Department charged the source, businessman Alexander Smirnov, with making a false statement and creating a false record related to the bribery allegation. And on Tuesday, the department revealed Smirnov confessed that Russian intelligence officers helped him smear Hunter Biden.

With the investigation going up in smoke around them, Republican leaders have started to erase references to Smirnov. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and Oversight Chair James Comer, who have spearheaded the probe, sent a letter Tuesday evening to former State Department official Amos Hochstein requesting an interview. The GOP has accused Hochstein of advising Hunter Biden at Burisma.

The original letter, which was obtained by The New Republic, included a section explaining the reason for the Biden investigation, with a paragraph that described a credible, confidential source’s accusation that a Ukrainian gas company executive had bribed the president. This background information has been standard for Republicans’ interview request letters during the impeachment inquiry thus far.

But an hour later, Republicans sent out a second version of the letter, also obtained by TNR. This time, the entire paragraph about the informant had been deleted.

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman can’t seem to wrap his head around negative reviews of President Joe Biden, claiming on Thursday that Democrats who criticize the president are only helping Donald Trump return to the White House.

“I don’t understand why,” Fetterman said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “I don’t know what’s in it for you to do that, whether you’re just chasing clout or you want to make it in the news or anything like that. But if you’re not willing to just support the president now and say these kinds of things, you might as well just get your MAGA hat, because you now are helping Trump with this.”

Fetterman’s attack comes as Democratic strategists and voters are raising concerns about the 81-year-old president—whether in regard to his age, his immigration policies, his stance on Gaza, or something else.

“The president is going to win here in Pennsylvania, and I’ve always believed that whoever wins Pennsylvania is going to be the next president as well, too,” Fetterman said, adding that it’s going to be “difficult,” and Democrats have to “lean in on that.”

It’s not the first time that Fetterman has dismissed criticism of the sitting president, adding to what seems to be a developing portrait of a DNC bootlicker rather than an independent lawmaker. In December, Fetterman resorted to the political strategy of a middle schooler to push back against a dire 2024 prediction for Biden by longtime Democratic political strategist James Carville.

“I’ll use this [as] another opportunity to tell James Carville to shut the fuck up,” Fetterman told Politico at the time, responding to a question about Biden’s floundering polling results. “Like I said, my man hasn’t been relevant since grunge was a thing. And I don’t know why he believes it’s helpful to say these kinds of things about an incredibly difficult circumstance with an incredibly strong and decent and excellent president. I’ll never understand that.”

Fetterman has spent the last few months transforming himself into a full-blown liberal, insisting that he was never a progressive politician despite previously leveraging the label for fundraising, claiming to be one online, and calling himself a “Bernie Sanders 2.0.”

A Texas judge ruled Thursday that the monthslong punishment of a Black high school student over his hairstyle somehow does not constitute race-based discrimination by his school.

Darryl George, a junior at Barbers Hill High School, has spent most of his school days since August in either in-school suspension or an off-site disciplinary program. The 18-year-old wears his hair in long locs twisted on top of his head. His school says the hairstyle violates the school district dress code, which states male students’ hair cannot hang below the eyebrows, earlobes, or neckline of a T-shirt.

George says he plans to appeal the judge’s decision.

George’s mother filed a federal lawsuit in September against the Barbers Hill school district and state officials. Darresha George accused the district of violating federal civil rights law and the state’s Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair, or CROWN Act, which bans discrimination based on hair texture or protective hairstyles associated with race. Darresha George also argued that Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton are failing to enforce the CROWN Act.

Darryl George says his locs are an expression of cultural pride but have unfortunately resulted in demeaning treatment and a loss of education.

“I am being harassed by school officials and treated like a dog,” he said in the lawsuit filing. “I am being subjected to cruel treatment and a lot of unkind words from many adults within the school including teachers, principals and administrators.”

After just a few hours on Thursday, state district Judge Chap Cain III ruled in favor of the school district. Cain said that disciplining George for the length of his hair is legal under the CROWN Act, which does not mention hair length.

But the lawmakers who wrote the act argue that length should be inherently protected. Democratic state Representative Ron Reynolds testified as much on Thursday.

“Length was inferred with the very nature of the style,” Reynolds told the courtroom. “Anyone familiar with braids, locs, twists knows it requires a certain amount of length.”

Reynolds said it is “almost impossible for a person to comply with this [grooming] policy and wear that protective hairstyle.”

Lawmakers and civil rights advocates say that the Barbers Hill dress code is based on anti-Black prejudice and stereotypes. In fact, George’s case isn’t the first time the school has caught heat for hair discrimination.

In 2020, Barbers Hill High School told a Black student that he could not attend his graduation ceremony unless he cut off his locs. His cousin, a sophomore at the time, was also given in-school suspension due to his hair length.

The students’ families filed a federal lawsuit arguing the dress code was discriminatory. That case is still ongoing, but it did prompt Texas to implement the CROWN Act statewide last year. Only 23 other states have passed the anti-discrimination law.

Before Abbott signed the CROWN Act, the Harris County Commissioners Court approved the measure in 2021. The county does not encompass the Barbers Hill school, but some Harris residents have been following George’s case.

Rodney Ellis, a Harris County commissioner and the sponsor of the resolution to enact the CROWN Act there, told The Texas Tribune he saw the Barbers Hill case as part of a larger national strategy. Throughout the country, Republican leaders have sharply restricted schools’ and libraries’ ability to teach Black history or have books about race.

“When young students are punished for simply expressing their cultural identity through their hair, it sends a chilling message that their heritage is unwelcome and that they do not belong,” Ellis said.

This story has been updated.

The Biden administration appears to be dutifully taking advantage of the ways Donald Trump reshaped executive power on immigration, even going so far as to consider utilizing the same statute that Trump relied on to enact his Muslim Ban.

President Joe Biden is reportedly mulling an executive order that would restrict asylum access in the U.S., following the rejection of a border deal in Congress that would have placed a weekly threshold on unlawful entries through the U.S.-Mexico border, capping it if more than 8,500 tried to cross the border on a single day. Biden is considering instituting a similar trigger via executive order.

To do so, he would leverage the section of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act that allows the suspension of entry for anyone determined to be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” This is the exact statute Trump used to ban travelers from several from Muslim-majority countries during the course of his presidency.

If true, Biden’s executive order would essentially reverse a longstanding law that any person arriving at the border is entitled to seek asylum protections, whether or not they have a sponsor, passport, or plane ticket. The National Immigrant Justice Center notes this right to claim asylum is critical since “people fleeing for their lives are often unable to access pathways that require identification documents and a safe haven to wait for processing.”

No decisions have yet been made in regards to the order, according to an unidentified White House official who spoke with The New York Times.

The proposal is a stark contrast to the campaign promises of 2020 candidate Joe Biden, who had pledged a more humane future for immigrants entering the country than the one offered by his predecessor. But whether or not the proposal passes may not matter—it could prove the difference for American voters, who as of a January poll ranked immigrants as their primary concern.

Meanwhile, Trump is finding his own ways to escalate his old border policies, promising to bring back President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback,” which used military tactics to ship some 1.3 million immigrants to locations without food or water, and radically expand detention centers.

Senator Tommy Tuberville took aim at Joe Biden’s physical capabilities during the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday—conveniently forgetting his own recent struggles.

Republicans have repeatedly argued (and some Democrats worry) that Biden, who at age 81 is the oldest president ever, is mentally and physically unfit to hold office. Thursday was no exception: during an onstage interview, Tuberville claimed Biden has declined so much that “he doesn’t know what day it is.”

Later, Tuberville told Newsmax that it has been concerning to “see [Biden’s] decline over the last few months.”

“I don’t think he’ll make it,” Tuberville said. “Just watched him yesterday walking on a tarmac in L.A. with Nancy Pelosi, shuffling his feet, looking at the ground.”

Tuberville, though, is 69—no spring chicken himself. And the Alabama Republican appears to have conveniently forgotten a major lapse in his own physical abilities, when exiting a plane in October.

Biden and Tuberville are not alone in their advanced years. This Congress is the third-oldest since 1789, when the legislative branch in its current form was first established. And the Senate is the second-oldest in all of U.S. history.