A Biden Accuser Was Discredited. Right-Wing Media Is Undeterred.

On Tuesday, a few hours after the credibility of a key source boosting Republican efforts to impeach President Biden collapsed in spectacular fashion, the Fox News host Jesse Watters offered his viewers a reassuring message.

“It’s a smear job,” Mr. Watters said.

He was referring to the Justice Department’s revelation that Alexander Smirnov, an F.B.I. informant who had accused Mr. Biden and his son Hunter of an elaborate bribery scheme involving Ukraine, was in fact a serial liar who could not be trusted. In a court filing, federal prosecutors said Mr. Smirnov had spread misinformation and was “actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials.”

Because Mr. Smirnov’s claims were frequently cited by congressional Republicans in their now-stalled attempt to unseat Mr. Biden from office, Democrats argued that the impeachment effort had reached a logical conclusion. “He is lying, and it should be dropped and it’s just been an outrageous effort from the beginning,” the president said last week.

But the conservative media world reacted with a different, and sharply defiant, narrative. In this worldview, news of Mr. Smirnov’s deceptions was merely part of a conspiracy to protect Mr. Biden at all costs.“They say he has ties to Russian intelligence; where did they get that from?” Mr. Watters told his prime-time audience, noting that Mr. Smirnov had previously been considered credible by the F.B.I. “They just gave the media and the Democrats permission to call the Ukraine bribes and the Biden impeachment ‘Russian disinformation’ for the rest of the year.”

Miranda Devine, a columnist for The New York Post, dismissed Mr. Smirnov as a “straw man” and said the evidence against Mr. Biden remained “overwhelming.” Maria Bartiromo, on Fox Business, described the Justice Department’s filing as “an intimidation tactic” and accused the government of “taking this guy down.”

At partisan media outlets, it is standard procedure to present new facts with a topspin that like-minded audiences may find sympathetic. The reaction to Mr. Smirnov offered a case study of how right-wing commentators could ignore or reinterpret information that might be beneficial to Mr. Biden, or detrimental to the political prospects of former President Donald J. Trump.

The Washington Examiner, an online outlet, published what it called a fact-check that found the Republican impeachment inquiry “was based on far more than the bribery claim Smirnov made,” apparently referring to witness testimony and subpoenaed bank records — none of which, to date, have revealed any conclusive evidence of corruption. The Examiner added, “Smirnov was not a key witness in the G.O.P. impeachment inquiry,” even though his claims had repeatedly been cited by leading conservative officials and commentators.

Some sought to reframe the subject, attacking the government’s handling of Mr. Smirnov, a handsomely paid informant who now says he was secretly communicating with the Kremlin under the F.B.I.’s nose for years. “The G.O.P.’s Biden probe doesn’t sink or swim on the bribery claims,” wrote Kimberley Strassel, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal’s opinion section. “Garbage in is garbage out. But it’s the F.B.I. that ought to have to explain the steaming pile of trash.”

The Fox News star Jeanine Pirro addressed the matter on “Hannity” on Thursday night. “You’ve got this guy Smirnov who was a respected confidential informant for 10 years by the F.B.I.,” she said. “They paid him money, he was so credible. Now, all of a sudden, a couple months ago, they decide, ‘Oh, he’s not credible,’ because he’s claiming that, you know, Joe Biden and Hunter Biden were engaged in a problem.”

Margot Cleveland, a correspondent at The Federalist, a right-leaning online outlet, argued that David C. Weiss, the special counsel who has been investigating Hunter Biden and who charged Mr. Smirnov last week, is the guilty party. Ms. Cleveland said the failure of Mr. Weiss to look into the informant’s background earlier had allowed him to continue “working to interfere in our election and pushing who knows what other lies to the F.B.I.”

“One thing is certain,” Ms. Cleveland wrote, “even if Smirnov is guilty, that does not exonerate Weiss.”

Others insisted that the case against the Bidens was still solid. The Daily Caller drew a comparison between Mr. Smirnov and Christopher Steele, the former British spy, whose allegations about collusion between Russia and Mr. Trump during the 2016 election were widely discussed in the news media. Why, the outlet pondered, was Mr. Steele not charged with lying to the government?

Attempts over several years by congressional Republicans to advance their claims that Mr. Biden and his son accepted bribes, or were involved in corrupt dealings, have been repeatedly shot down or produced no credible evidence. That did not stop a writer at The Gateway Pundit, a digital outlet that frequently traffics in conspiracies embraced by the right, from arguing that Mr. Smirnov’s credibility was in fact unblemished, and his allegations still sound.

“Alexander Smirnov NEVER ‘spread Russian disinformation,’” Cristina Laila, an associate editor, wrote. “No one is falling for this Russia Hoax 2.0 you’re peddling.”