Desperate James Comer Has a New Excuse After Losing His Star Witness

House Oversight Chair James Comer has a new explanation for why the main witness in his rapidly crumbling impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden was indicted for lying to the FBI: It’s all a deep state conspiracy.

Comer made his latest claims about Alexander Smirnov during an interview on Newsmax, which the Kentucky representative shared on social media Sunday. Smirnov, an ex-FBI informant, claimed that Biden and his son Hunter accepted bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch. But the Justice Department has since charged Smirnov with making false statements and revealed he admitted that Russian intelligence operatives fed him the accusation. Smirnov was arrested, released on bail, and then arrested again for fear of being a flight risk.

During the Newsmax interview, host Greg Kelly said he feared that Smirnov’s life “could be in danger.”

“You’re exactly accurate,” Comer said. “This stinks to high heaven. It wasn’t an important part of our case. It was a tip that we got from Charles Grassley. We investigate every tip, but at the end of the day, the more they do to this Smirnov guy, and the more that they use it in their media narrative, the fishier it sounds to me.”

In reality, Smirnov’s claims—which the FBI repeatedly warned were never confirmed—served as the entire basis for the Republicans’ investigation into the president and his family. But since Smirnov’s indictment, Republicans have rushed to rewrite their inquiry, deleting references to him from witness request letters and even the Oversight Committee website. Comer has accused the FBI of being “suspicious” and undermining Smirnov’s supposedly rock-solid credibility.

Comer’s behavior directly contradicts a promise he made last May, toward the start of the Biden investigation. “The Committee will assess the form it has subpoenaed from the FBI,” he said at the time, referring to the FD-1023 form outlining Smirnov’s claims. Those forms are only used to document unverified tips to the FBI.

“[As] has been my practice, we will report to you only facts when they are verified and indisputable,” Comer continued. “This committee will not pursue witch hunts or string the American people along for years with false promises of evidence that is beyond circumstantial evidence.”

And yet, despite Comer saying just last week that he was “ready to try to begin to close this investigation,” he and the other committee chairs spearheading the Biden probe have continued to levy accusations against the president and even summon more witnesses to testify.

Earlier in the Newsmax interview, Comer claimed that Hunter Biden lied while testifying to the Oversight Committee, because investigators had found proof and heard witness testimony confirming that the father-son duo were involved in criminal business practices overseas.

Every single witness Republicans have called has refuted these accusations. And ironically, Comer left toward the beginning of Hunter’s testimony, so he missed most of what the embattled first son said.

A loyal former lieutenant of Donald Trump who served as a key witness in the former president’s New York fraud trial pleaded guilty to perjury on Monday morning.

Allen Weisselberg, a former top executive of the Trump Organization, was a key witness out of the 40-odd people who took the stand during the fraud trial, in which Trump was ultimately penalized more than $450 million for massively overinflating his net worth in order to broker better (and fraudulent) deals with banks and insurance companies.

Weisselberg faces five months in jail after admitting he lied to investigators from the New York attorney general’s office in Trump’s civil fraud trial. The sentencing hearing is expected to take place April 10, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a press release.

The 76-year-old bookkeeper has been a faithful ally and confidant of Trump’s, reaping under-the-table luxuries like expensive apartments and cars as rewards for helping to camouflage a sprawling tax fraud scheme.

Weisselberg’s plea agreement comes at a critical juncture in Trump’s legal journey, just weeks before Trump will stand trial on unrelated charges pertaining to hush-money payments made by another one of his fixers, attorney Michael Cohen, to cover up his affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels shy of the 2016 presidential election.

Last month, prosecutors were taking a particular interest in claims that Weisselberg had made on October 10 about Trump’s penthouse at Trump Tower, which had been overvalued on his financial statements, being inaccurately reported as three times its actual size.

But Trump’s ability to navigate his upcoming criminal trials is still unclear, given that the self-purported billionaire can’t seem to scrape together the funds to put his civil penalties behind him.

On Wednesday, a New York appeals court judge rejected Trump’s last-ditch effort to postpone paying the full amount in lieu of a $100 million bond. The judge did, however, grant some relief after Trump’s legal team argued in an 1,800-page court filing that it would be “impossible” to secure a bond covering the full amount of the multimillion-dollar ruling. The granted request will allow Trump to continue borrowing money, though the ruling is temporary until a full panel of judges deliberates on the order.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg—Trump owes an additional $88.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for sexually assaulting her and then defaming her twice in his rabid denials. He owes $400,000 to The New York Times and has racked up thousands more over gag orders he’s violated amid all these trials. And in the realm of non–court ordered debts, Trump’s former right-hand man, America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani, claimed he still hasn’t been paid for the legal services he provided to the former president and is reportedly waiting on a sum of about $2 million.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that Donald Trump can appear on the Colorado state primary ballot, shutting down dozens of similar efforts to ban him from the election for his role in the January 6 insurrection.

The nation’s highest court heard arguments in early February about whether Colorado could disqualify Trump from its ballot under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The majority of the justices had seemed skeptical at the time, and apparently remained so by the time they issued their ruling.

Trump is now eligible to receive votes in Colorado’s Republican primary on Tuesday. The justices’ decision means that Maine and Illinois, which have also disqualified Trump from their presidential primary ballots, must reinstate him.

“Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse,” the justices wrote in their ruling.

Although the ruling was unanimous, the justices were divided in their reasoning behind it. Five conservative justices determined that the Fourteenth Amendment can only be enforced through a law passed by Congress.

The three liberal justices agreed that Colorado couldn’t make such a massive decision on its own, but strongly disputed that the amendment can only be applied through legislation. Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson slammed the majority for overstepping the bounds of the lawsuit at hand, and in doing so, “ruling out enforcement under general federal statutes requiring the government to comply with the law.”

“By resolving these and other questions, the majority attempts to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office,” the three justices wrote in their dissenting opinion.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not rule on the dispute on congressional enforcement, but still, the ruling notes, “All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.”

The Colorado state Supreme Court ruled in December that Trump had engaged in insurrection during the January 6 attack and was therefore ineligible to appear on the primary ballot. Little more than a week later, Maine’s secretary of state also barred him from the state’s ballot.

Multiple other states either are currently weighing or have decided whether Trump can appear on their ballot. The range in decisions prompted many to urge the Supreme Court to weigh in quickly, to avoid confusion ahead of the election.

Trump’s lawyers had said repeatedly they expected the Supreme Court to rule in their favor, even hinting it would be because some of the justices owed Trump some form of allegiance. Trump appointed three of the current justices.

Monday’s decision will provide a single rule for all states for the rest of the election cycle. But it will also likely shape how the Fourteenth Amendment’s language will be interpreted going forward.

This story has been updated.

Congratulations to Nikki Haley on winning her first primary. She should probably thank Donald Trump, who definitely let her win on purpose—at least, according to him.

Haley dominated on Sunday in Washington, D.C.’s Republican primary, notching about 63 percent support. She won all 19 of the city’s Republican delegates, putting an unceremonious halt to Trump’s otherwise unobstructed cruise to the GOP nomination.

Trump, who has far outstripped Haley until now, won just 33 percent support. But that’s OK, because he totally planned it that way.

“I purposely stayed away from the D.C. Vote because it is the ‘Swamp,’ with very few delegates, and no upside. Birdbrain spent all of her time, money and effort there,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Over the weekend we won Missouri, Idaho, and Michigan—BIG NUMBERS—Complete destruction of a very weak opponent.”

Trump called Haley “Birdbrain” again in another post and slammed her for saying Sunday morning that she no longer felt bound to support the former president if he is the GOP nominee, despite signing a pledge to the Republican National Committee to support whoever wins the nomination.

“Birdbrain is a loser, record low performance in virtually every State,” Trump posted. “I enjoy watching the Bird disavow her PLEDGE to the RNC and her statement that she would NEVER run against President Trump (‘A great President’). Well, she ran, she lied, and she LOST BIG!”

Trump’s campaign released a statement Sunday night branding Haley the “Queen of the Swamp” and promising Trump would drain said swamp if he is reelected—despite the fact that Trump actually left Washington “swampier” than when he first arrived.

Despite the D.C. hiccup, Trump is still by far the front-runner in the Republican primary. He has won nearly six times as many delegates as Haley, although he still needs to win another 1,215 before officially claiming the nomination.

The University of Florida nixed its entire diversity, equity, and inclusion staff on Friday, thanks to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s wingman in the GOP’s war on education, Ben Sasse.

Sasse, the former Republican senator from Nebraska turned university president, terminated 13 full-time positions and 15 administrative appointments for faculty members, a university spokesperson told Axios.

According to an administrative memo obtained by the the campus’s student paper, The Alligator, DEI staff would be fired effective immediately, with severances tantamount to 12 weeks of pay. Additionally, $5 million would be redirected from DEI programs and placed in a “faculty recruitment fund” to be administered by the university’s Office of the Provost however it deems fit.

“These colleagues are allowed and encouraged to apply, between now and Friday, April 19, for expedited consideration for different positions currently posted within the university,” the memo read.

“Florida is where DEI goes to die …” DeSantis coldly wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, shortly after the decision became public.

The employees are the latest victims of DeSantis’s all-out war on what he describes as “woke culture” on college campuses—which Sasse has been gleefully helping him lead. Last May, the conservative politician signed a bill that effectively defunded diversity programs, prohibiting state schools from spending state or federal funds on DEI initiatives.

“If you look at the way this has actually been implemented across the country, DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion, and indoctrination,” DeSantis said during a press conference at the time. “And that has no place in our public institutions. This bill says the whole experiment with DEI is coming to an end in the state of Florida.”