Comer Tells Fox News That His Once ‘Crucial’ Informant Was Actually ‘Not Relevant’ to Biden Investigation

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) went on Fox News Tuesday morning to defend himself after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) accused Comer of pushing Russian-sourced allegations against President Joe Biden through the House.

“You have the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Representative Comer, take up, quote-unquote, evidence and account from someone who was working with the Russian intelligence and try to impeach and remove the president of the United States over it. This is serious,” Ocasio-Cortez told Stephen Colbert on Monday night.

Colbert replied, “How did they not know that? Or did they know that this was connected to the Russians, or did they not figure that out because they hadn’t translated from the Cyrillic?”

“That, I think, is a very excellent question for Chairman Comer,” shot back Ocasio-Cortez.

Fox host Carley Shimkus brought Comer on after playing the clip and asked, “Congressman, your colleague and Stephen Colbert clearly have some questions for you regarding the impeachment inquiry. So what is your reaction to that moment from Late Night with Stephen Colbert last night?”

“You know, all the Democrats have is Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia. Our investigation has actually proven that the Bidens took $3.5 million from a Russian oligarch for no known reason. We deposed the president’s son as you know, and they couldn’t explain why they received $3.5 million. We believe the money was received because the Russian oligarch couldn’t get an American bank to take her as a client,” Comer replied, adding:

All the people that the Bidens were influence peddling with were bad people from bad countries around the world. The Democrats always go back to Russia 2.0. I assume what AOC is talking about is, is the FBI informant that was arrested. We never knew who the FBI informant was. We had whistleblowers bring forward a 1023 that alleged the Bidens were involved in a bribery scheme.

This allegation was consistent with what we had already found in Romania and China. We knew that the Bidens were up to no good in Ukraine. So we investigated this. We asked Christopher Wray, who the FBI informant was, and Christopher Wray himself told us the FBI informant was was one of the bureau’s most trusted and highest-paid informants. In fact, he had been with the bureau for over ten years. So the whole ordeal there, with the FBI informant, wasn’t relevant to the investigation? It was one part that we investigated. But the Democrats and the intelligence community are colluding with the media to try to say that that was a key part of the investigation, and therefore, the investigation needs to end.

The bottom line is this the Bidens took nearly $30 million from our enemies around the world. They can’t say what they did to receive the money. We believe Joe Biden’s compromised because of the money he’s taken. And we know Joe Biden’s been dishonest with the American people.

Comer’s reply to Shimkus marks a remarkable change of tune regarding the informant, Alexander Smirnov. In May of 2023, Comer told Fox’s Jesse Watters that Smirnov’s allegations were “a very crucial piece of our investigation” and detailed his fight to get the 1023 form released by the FBI.

Notably, a 1023 form is an unverified whistleblower allegation and in this case the form was only made public as Republicans disclosed it as part of a partisan investigation. After Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) made the form public, not only was the allegations within it debunked, Smirnov admitted to prosecutors that the information came from Russian intelligence as part of an effort to meddle in U.S. politics.

Watch the clip above.

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