The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Turner, is defending House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Biden after the star witness of the case, Alexander Smirnov, was indicted for lying to the FBI about a $10 million bribe that he said had been paid to both the president and his son Hunter during the Obama administration.

“This inquiry — and it is just an inquiry — is based upon actual bank records, documents, transactions,” Mr. Turner tells NBC News’ Kristen Welker. “I’m not surprised at all that a business associate of the Biden family might be untruthful. We’ll just have to continue to see what the bank records — the transactions — tell how that story unfolds.”

Mr. Smirnov was never a business associate of Hunter Biden and never claimed to have met the first son. Mr. Smirnov only made the accusation that both father and son each received $5 million after executives at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma — which employed the younger Mr. Biden — declined to cooperate with Mr. Smirnov and his associates on deals involving cryptocurrency and an initial public offering in America. 

The House Oversight Committee, which is leading the impeachment inquiry, said in a statement in response to Mr. Smirnov’s indictment that they have “over $30 million reasons to continue this investigation and not one of those reasons relies on the corrupt FBI or an informant” and that “bank records don’t lie.”

Democrats say that because Mr. Smirnov has been indicted for making up lies about the Biden family, the impeachment inquiry should be shuttered. “It should be dropped,” the president told reporters on Friday, adding that the impeachment probe was “an outrageous effort from the beginning.”

In response to the indictment of Mr. Smirnov, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Jamie Raskin, said “it is an undeniable fact that Republicans’ allegations against President Biden have always been a tissue of lies built on conspiracy theories.”

The chairman of the Oversight Committee, James Comer, previously told the Sun he plans to ask the first son and the president’s brother, James Biden, about their various foreign business dealings when the two men appear for depositions later this month. 

“He’s got some answers we need,” Mr. Comer said of the younger Mr. Biden. The chairman says he plans to go through the family bank records and ask the first son about each transaction “line-by-line.”

Hopes for a Biden impeachment have been dashed in recent months as the House Republican majority faces setback after setback on not only major policy priorities, but the basic functions of legislating.

On February 6, Speaker Johnson suffered an historic embarrassment when he brought articles of impeachment to the House floor against the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, only to have them fail due to a number of GOP defections and the surprise appearance of a wheelchair-bound Democratic congressman. The House later passed the articles of impeachment by one vote. 

On the same night Mr. Mayorkas was impeached, Republicans also lost a critical swing seat on Long Island, where Democratic former congressman Tom Suozzi won back the seat formerly held by Congressman George Santos.  Republicans now have just a two-vote majority in the House for a potential impeachment against the president.