Jim Jordan Offers Startling Confession on Indicted Biden Informant

After trying and failing to salvage Republicans’ crumbling impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan at last, finally, conceded on Friday that Alexander Smirnov’s story might not be totally accurate.

“I don’t know, maybe the guy did lie,” Jordan said at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday.

The House Judiciary chair spent the better part of the week attempting to twist and tweak Smirnov’s testimony, insisting, as he had for months, that Smirnov’s allegations—that Biden had reaped millions off of a business deal between his son and the Ukrainian company Burisma—still held weight, and could prove the most viable pathway to successfully charge the sitting president. That is, even after Smirnov was indicted for lying to the FBI about those claims—and then reportedly admitted to prosecutors that the story had been drawn up with the help of top Russian intelligence officials and the whole thing was a bed of lies.

Still, Jordan couldn’t totally put the theory to rest at CPAC on Friday, attempting instead to distract from the dumpster fire probe by claiming the Department of Justice was operating under a double standard by arresting Smirnov for lying to investigators.

“But there sure is quite a contrast for—Christopher Steele can give false information about President Trump, and he continues to get paid. This guy, this Mr. Smirnov, can give false information—what they’ve said is false information—and he gets arrested,” Jordan added, referring to former British spy Christopher Steele and his private report of raw intelligence on Trump’s suspected ties to the Russian government, better known as the Steele Dossier.

Trump and his allies have attempted to claim that the dossier served as the basis for Trump’s impeachment inquiry. In reality, a Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee (which Jordan has sat on since 2019) helped prompt an FBI investigation with its memo on former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos.

The Ohio lawmaker’s confession also comes two days after one of his colleagues, Representative Ken Buck, revealed that Jordan and House Oversight Chair James Comer had both been warned ahead of time that the story sold by their primary witness was full of holes.

“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,” Buck told Kaitlin Collins on CNN’s The Source.

A Republican representative is outraged by the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling restricting IVF—despite supporting a federal bill that would have done just that.

“As someone who struggled to get pregnant, I believe all life is a gift. IVF allowed me, as it has so many others, to start my family,” California Representative Michelle Steel tweeted on Thursday. “I believe there is nothing more pro-life than helping families have children, and I do not support federal restrictions on IVF.”

Steel’s solidarity with Alabaman IVF patients rings pretty hollow considering she co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act. The measure, which was introduced first in 2021 with 166 co-sponsors and then again in 2023 with 124, would have established that life begins at fertilization. The bill has not advanced since.

Like the Alabama ruling, the Life at Conception Act would have severely restricted—if not effectively banned—IVF treatments as well, because it grants “equal protection” to “preborn” humans, including embryos. Since it’s common for fertilized eggs not to survive the IVF process, the act would put doctors at risk of being charged for wrongful death of embryos. That risk would be enough to scupper the IVF industry.

And that is exactly what is happening in Alabama. The state Supreme Court ruled 7–2 last week that embryos created through IVF can be considered children and are thus protected under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. Since then, at least three fertility clinics have ceased IVF treatments to avoid potential legal repercussions.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s medical school announced Wednesday that it is pausing IVF treatments. The next day, the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Mobile Infirmary Medical Center, which was a defendant in the Supreme Court lawsuit, and Alabama Fertility Specialists announced they were also halting IVF treatment. The CDC lists a total of eight clinics in the state that provide assisted reproductive technology services.

Other Republican lawmakers have also spoken out against the Alabama decision, and their responses are just as hypocritical as Steel’s, although for a different reason. Party leadership is rushing to preserve the GOP’s supposedly pro-family reputation, and on Friday, the Senate Republican campaign arm sent a memo to GOP candidates, urging them to “clearly and concisely reject efforts by the government to restrict IVF.”

In the memo, the National Republican Senatorial Committee slammed the all-conservative Alabama court’s decision as “fodder for Democrats hoping to manipulate the abortion issue for electoral gain.”

Republicans are frantically scrambling to save face as an allegedly pro-family party, following a devastating ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court that has effectively restricted in vitro fertilization across the state.

On Friday, the Senate Republican campaign arm issued a memo urging its political candidates to “clearly and concisely reject efforts by the government to restrict IVF.” The National Republican Senatorial Committee derided the all-conservative court’s decision in a deep red state as “fodder for Democrats hoping to manipulate the abortion issue for electoral gain,” according to a copy of the memo obtained by Axios.

And like clockwork, a flurry of Republican candidates across the nation issued their own renewed stances on the issue.

“One in six Americans struggle with fertility issues,” posted Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, slightly downplaying how common infertility is in the United States, which affects about one in five women.

“In the Senate, I will advocate for increased access to fertility treatment for women struggling to get pregnant. IVF is extremely important for helping countless families experience the joy of parenthood. I oppose restrictions,” Lake continued.

Over in Ohio, Senate candidate Bernie Moreno defended IVF treatments on the basis that his “goal is to promote a culture of life.”

“We have a crisis in this country of people not having enough kids at replacement levels,” Moreno posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “I’m in favor of anything that promotes people having more babies & strong families.”

Other Republicans similarly flipped their stance on the issue, robotically miming their support for IVF despite having co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which hoped to recognize fertilized eggs as children at the federal level—or, as one of the bill’s 166 House Republican co-sponsors, West Virginia Representative Alex Mooney, initially put it, “establish personhood at the moment of conception.”

“As someone who struggled to get pregnant, I believe all life is a gift. IVF allowed me, as it has so many others, to start my family. I believe there is nothing more pro-life than helping families have children, and I do not support federal restrictions on IVF,” posted California Representative Michelle Steel on Thursday, despite signing on to the controversial bill in 2021.

But not every lawmaker seemed to be in on the reversed messaging.

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, who is up for reelection in 2026, mentioned at CPAC on Thursday that he was “all for” his state’s decision, referring to the judicial ruling as a “bill” before admitting that he didn’t consider restricted access to the assisted family conception procedure a “big conversation” and hadn’t actually looked into it.

They say a magician never reveals his tricks, but Paul Carpenter is ready to reveal this one: The New Orleans–based illusionist says a Democratic consultant affiliated with the Dean Phillips presidential campaign paid him to make a digitally manipulated recording of Joe Biden.

The weekend before the New Hampshire primary, New Hampshire Democrats received a robocall that used a digitally faked recording of the president to urge them to “save” their votes and not write Biden’s name on their ballots. Biden ultimately won the Democratic primary through a write-in campaign.

Carpenter told NBC News in a story published Friday that he was hired by Steve Kramer to make multiple imitations of politicians’ voices, including the one of Biden, using A.I. software. Kramer has worked on ballot access for Phillips, the Minnesota representative running a long-shot Democratic presidential campaign against Biden.

“I created the audio used in the robocall. I did not distribute it,” Carpenter said of the Biden deepfake. “I was in a situation where someone offered me some money to do something, and I did it. There was no malicious intent. I didn’t know how it was going to be distributed.”

“It’s so scary that it’s this easy to do,” Carpenter said. “People aren’t ready for it.”

Carpenter, whose political views appear to span the spectrum from pro–conspiracy theory to anti–Donald Trump, says he and Kramer met through a mutual acquaintance. He provided NBC with texts, emails, and Venmo payment receipts detailing their relationship.

Kramer first hired Carpenter in September to make two A.I. recordings of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. In January, Kramer asked Carpenter for the fake recording of Biden. Carpenter told NBC he had never heard of Phillips. Instead, he believed Kramer was working for Graham and Biden, and that their campaigns had authorized the voice projects.

Kramer’s father, Bruce, paid Carpenter $150 via the electronic payment platform Venmo for the Biden deepfake. It is not clear why Kramer had his father send the payment.

Carpenter says Kramer directed him to delete all of their email correspondence after the news of the Biden robocall broke. Those emails included instructions for creating the A.I. recording and the script Carpenter followed.

Phillips’s campaign denied knowledge of or involvement in the deepfake robocall plot. The campaign told NBC that Kramer had completed his contract to help Phillips get on the ballot in certain states several weeks ago and was no longer in communication with him. The campaign also said it would consider taking legal action against Kramer if the allegations are true.

However, Phillips has been linked to weird A.I. before. A pro-Phillips PAC created an A.I. version of the candidate that The New Republic’s Tim Noah found much more engaging than Phillips himself.

This isn’t the first time Kramer has been associated with political scandal. He helped Kanye West get ballot access during his highly controversial presidential campaign in 2020.

The following year, Kramer’s client Sara Tirschwell sued him. Tirschwell had been running as a Republican for New York City mayor, but she was kicked off the ballot in April 2021 after she failed to get enough signatures to qualify. Tirschwell accused Kramer of sabotaging her campaign by gathering signatures that mostly ended up being invalid. Kramer has denied the accusations, and the case is currently ongoing.

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson won’t be called a liar—at least not by Republicans’ Biden corruption witness Tony Bobulinski.

At a House panel last week, Republicans revealed Bobulinski, one of Hunter Biden’s former business partners, as their new star witness in their Biden impeachment crusade. During that panel, Bobulinski derided Hutchinson as an “absolute liar and a fraud,” taking issue with a section of her book, Enough, that recollected an “out of sight” meeting between him and Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, at a 2020 campaign rally in Rome, Georgia.

As Hutchinson describes it, Bobulinski chose to wear a “ski mask” to conceal his identity while Meadows handed him a “folded sheet of paper or small envelope.”

“[Meadows] didn’t hand me a single thing,” Bobulinski insisted at the House panel.

But on Friday, Hutchinson called Bobulinski’s bluff, sharing photographic evidence of the “suspicious” encounter.

In the photo, the pair appear to be standing between a couple of SUVs outside of a Trump rally, with Meadows in a red cap and Bobulinski in a black Penn State hat and mask.

“Mr. Bobulinski claims under oath that he was not wearing a mask, that Mr. Meadows did not hand him anything, and that Ms. Hutchinson was ‘fabricating facts,’” Hutchinson’s lawyer wrote in a letter addressing Bobulinski. “Perhaps Mr. Bobulinski’s memory is impaired about the meeting, and a picture would help refresh his recollection.”

But Bobulinski refused to yield, even while caught red-handed.

“We will see to it that Ms. Hutchinson soon gets her day in court to tell her story in front of a jury and the truth will prevail,” Bobulinski’s attorney, Jesse Binnall, wrote in a statement to ABC News.