Dem Dan Goldman: Ex-FBI Informant Shows House GOP ‘Operating at the Behest of Russian Intelligence and Vladimir Putin’

Rep. Dan Goldman did not mince words in his Tuesday night appearance on CNN, where he and host Anderson Cooper discussed news that the source for the Biden bribery scandal had ties to Russian intelligence, which he directly connected to charge the House GOP as “operating at the behest of Russian Intelligence and Vladimir Putin.”

News broke Tuesday evening that the former FBI informant who claimed President Joe Biden received a $5 million bribe said that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved” in proliferating that claim, according to a Department of Justice filing on Tuesday. Alexander Smirnov was arrested last week and charged with lying to the FBI. He claimed that Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, received $5 million each when the elder Biden was vice president.

Goldman is not only a Democratic member of Congress but was also part of the team for former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, and as a result, is fluent on the matter of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, on whose board Hunter Biden sat. Smirnov had claimed the money was payment for Biden getting Ukraine’s government to fire a prosecutor named Viktor Shokin, who, as the story goes, was investigating the company for corruption. However, as has been widely reported, Shokin was fired for not probing corruption and had no active investigation into Burisma at the time of his firing.

“Well, it’s pretty shocking, especially what it means that has been going on for the last four years, which is that, wittingly or unwittingly, House Republicans have been acting as an agent or an asset of Russian intelligence for Vladimir Putin,” Goldman said to Cooper right out the gate. “This whole Burisma thing was debunked during the first impeachment investigation in 2019 by numerous witnesses, all of whom were experts on Ukraine and Russia.”

After mentioning how the underlying document — the 1023 — about a purported conversation in 2020 has been “treated as gospel by the Republicans,” Goldman openly wondered “whether or not Senator Grassley, who had a copy of this 1023 before the FBI ever gave it, or Chairman Comber or Chairman Jordan, all of whom were singing the praises of this, the information provided by this source had any idea whether or not it was completely bogus and was in fact a plant by Russian intelligence, which has been trying to meddle somewhat successfully in our elections since 2016.”

“Chairman Jordan and Chairman Comber have said that this is the best evidence they have of misconduct by President Biden,” Goldman said.
In fact, it is not evidence. It is just simply evidence that the Republicans are willing to be used as assets of Russian intelligence, just like Donald Trump was in 2016 and throughout his presidency when he went to a press conference in Helsinki and chose Vladimir Putin’s word over his own intelligence community. That is who we are dealing with. It is now a pervasive disease that has gone through the entire Republican Party, and it needs to be excised immediately.”

“it now appears as if the House Republican majority is being used by Russia to interfere in the 2024 election on behalf of Donald Trump,” he continued. “If they continue with this investigation, they are simply doing the work of Vladimir Putin to help Donald Trump win an election in November. That’s where we are.”

Watch above via CNN.