Follow the trail from Bill Barr to a lie about Joe Biden The indictment of Alexander Smirnov, a trusted FBI confidential source, on charges of lying about an alleged Ukrainian bribery scheme involving President Biden and his son Hunter is a new twist in a saga that has its roots in a project launched by then-Attorney General William P. Barr soon after President Donald Trump was impeached for the first time. Trump was impeached Dec. 18, 2019, charged with pressuring the Ukrainian government to turn up dirt on Biden, potentially his most formidable rival in 2020. Sixteen days later, on Jan. 3, 2020, Barr tasked Scott Brady, a U.S. attorney in Western Pennsylvania, with vetting material regarding Biden and Ukraine — some of it supplied by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani — for possible distribution to prosecutors who could use a grand jury to investigate further. A detailed review of information contained in the indictment, Brady's testimony before congressional investigators, public statements and other documents shows that — absent Barr's creation of a Biden task force — Smirnov's allegations probably never would have appeared in the FBI document that led to his indictment and to the possible collapse of the Republicans' impeachment case with Smirnov as its star. Click the link to read a detailed timeline of the years-long events ending in Smirnov's arrest. Also: Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who heads the impeachment inquiry, has suggested that two Ukraine-related documents referenced in special counsel Robert K. Hur's report concerning Joe Biden's handling of classified documents might have ended up informing or been part of emails found on the laptop that the president's son Hunter left at a computer repair shop in Delaware. But that turned out to be wrong. Click the link for more. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. Biden faults Trump's vaccine rollout as he cites total covid death toll After President Biden took office, he would often misleadingly claim that the Trump administration had vaccinated relatively few Americans during the coronavirus pandemic compared to the Biden administration. In recent weeks, Biden has expanded this longstanding talking point to include the total number of dead from the pandemic. Trump "did not move on making sure that we dealt with vaccinating the American public," Biden said on Feb. 12. "We ended up losing over a million people dead — a million people." To some ears, he seems to be blaming Trump for the total covid death toll. A White House official said Biden was not trying to blame Trump for the deaths and said that his comments reflected reporting that criticized Trump's vaccine rollout effort and noted Biden's pledge to ramp up shots. We dug through the data and determined how many people died of covid under Trump (465,043) and under Biden (713,484). By mentioning the covid death toll in the same breath as denouncing Trump's vaccine distribution, Biden seems to be subtly connecting the two — while avoiding any blame for deaths that occurred on his watch. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP and @AdriUsero) or Facebook. We're also on TikTok. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. About the cats: It's a Friday and sometimes our fact checks deal with heavy or depressing subjects. So we hope to bring a smile to your face. Scroll down to read other Hunter Biden fact checks | 
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