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.