Smirnov first relayed the sensational and very much unconfirmed bribery claim in a 2020 interview with the F.B.I. This past summer, Republicans pursuing the President released a redacted version of the F.B.I. report that included Smirnov’s allegation. It was their smoking gun, their white whale—the only concrete example they had managed to turn up with a specific person attesting to an actual criminal act on the part of the President.
But, on Thursday morning, when I spoke with Jamie Raskin, who, as the lead Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, has spent the past year trying to shut down the impeachment folly, he was feeling hopeful that it was now time to “fold up the circus tent” after the long-running “comedy of errors” had turned out to be “a big Russian intelligence op.