So let’s be clear: Senate Republicans appear to be in such a rush that they are not doing basic due diligence on one of their star witnesses, thus leaving the proceedings highly vulnerable to getting polluted by disinformation spread by a source utterly lacking in credibility.

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Of course, Senate Republicans may view such an outcome as a positive, not a negative.

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President Trump is watching closely. He just retweeted conservative criticism of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) — who dared to experience qualms about the investigation’s political nature — effectively warning GOP senators to remain committed to it.

Senate GOP’s next big step

On Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security Committee will vote to subpoena someone Republicans view as a crucial witness against Hunter Biden: Andrii Telizhenko, a political consultant who represented Burisma in the United States.

Burisma is the Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. Trumpworld has spun a tale about alleged Joe Biden corruption that centers on his effort to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor, supposedly to protect Burisma and Hunter. That tale is entirely fabricated, and Joe Biden’s Ukraine efforts were entirely legitimate and even supported by Republicans at the time.

But Republicans still believe they can make charges of corruption stick to Hunter Biden, which (they hope) will cast a pall over Joe Biden.

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This is where the subpoena of Telizhenko comes in. Democrats oppose this because they view him as a highly unreliable witness.

What Democrats are demanding

Telizhenko has long played an active role in spreading the debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine colluded with Democrats in 2016. Our intelligence services have told senators that this is central to Russian disinformation efforts.

So Homeland Security Committee Democrats want all senators on the committee to get a classified briefing from the intelligence community on Telizhenko — to demonstrate that intelligence officials don’t view him as credible.

“This is a fictional narrative perpetrated by Russian security services, and you’ve got Telizhenko basically out there saying the same thing,” Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the committee, told me. “What do intelligence services know about Telizhenko? We’d like to have a briefing on that.”

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Peters pointed to an ugly irony in this situation. Telizhenko is spreading disinformation designed to cover up the Russian attack on our democracy. But the Homeland Security Committee, which is tasked with oversight designed to help protect the country, may allow itself to become a platform for him.

An intelligence briefing on Telizhenko might “taint the credibility of whatever he has to say,” Peters told me, noting that he doesn’t want the committee to become a platform for any “false narrative” Telizhenko could be peddling.

Why aren’t GOP senators concerned about this?

What Republicans are trying to show

The committee chair, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), has defended subpoenaing Telizhenko, claiming the investigation he’s currently pursuing isn’t about validating the Ukraine-hacked-our-election falsehood. Instead, he wants records from Telizhenko that are relevant to his work as a consultant for Blue Star Strategies, Burisma’s representative in the U.S.

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But when you look closely, this sure starts to look like a fishing expedition.

The current GOP focus is on creating the impression that Hunter Biden improperly used his connections to his father — then the vice president — to influence State Department policy to the benefit of Burisma.

Sen. Johnson noted in a letter to the State Department that the committee has obtained department emails that purportedly show another Blue Star employee dangling Hunter Biden’s name while seeking a meeting at State to influence Obama administration policy toward Burisma. Johnson has demanded additional State documents to examine this question.

But as Johnson’s own letter concedes, it’s not yet clear anything even came of this effort. Nor is it clear that Hunter had any role in that lobbying. Nor has any evidence yet emerged that State Department policy changed in any way as a result of these efforts.

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So for the time being, all we have is that Burisma’s U.S. representative tried to lobby on Burisma’s behalf, and noted that Burisma had a very politically connected person on its board. That may well constitute typical Washington influence-seeking — the sort of thing that should be the target of reforms undertaken by the next Democratic president — but there’s no scandal here.

These efforts to probe Hunter Biden appear all about finding something to spin into one.

Hunter could still be a problem

To be clear, we may well learn that Hunter Biden did unsavory things to help Burisma in Washington. Obama administration officials did worry that Biden’s role with Burisma created the appearance of milking proximity to his father. Joe Biden probably shouldn’t have allowed his son to join Burisma.

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But if more emerges about Hunter Biden, even that doesn’t necessarily make a serious scandal. The key questions will become whether Obama administration policy actually did change in response to any such efforts, and whether Joe Biden himself had any involvement with whatever Hunter Biden did (which hasn’t even been established yet).

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What remains inexplicable is why Republicans don’t want a classified intelligence briefing on the very person they see as a key witness, given his known role in spreading disinformation.

“This should not be a hyper-partisan issue,” Peters told me. He added that Johnson “seems to want to act very quickly. You’d have to ask him why.”