House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has officially announced an impeachment inquiry has been launched into President Joe Biden and his fellow House GOPers are taking to the media to defend this move. But in so doing, many are reviving a long-debunked conspiracy theory involving then Vice President Joe Biden and Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin.

And Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is one of the GOPers who has thrown himself into the mix.

“I think there are four, four key facts, four central facts that are at the heart of this issue,” Jordan said on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning.

He added:

“The first is Hunter Biden was put on the Burisma board. Second he was put on that board with no qualifications. Third, Burisma asked him, can you weigh in with DC to relieve the pressure we’re under from the prosecution, from the prosecutor in Ukraine?”

“And fourth, Joe Biden did just that. He leveraged our tax money to get the prosecutor fired. And that fourth fact is, is validation of what the confidential human source said in the 1023 form. So that is what is central to this case.”

Jordan emphasized that the impeachment inquiry, which he will head, in part, since he is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, relies on those “four facts” and “that’s why the speaker has said we’re moving to this phase of our constitutional duty to do oversight of the executive branch.”

In an opinion piece for Mediaite, Alex Griffing writes that the first three of Jordan’s “facts” may have some substance and could prove to be true since “No one is contending Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Burisma were merit-based,” but the fourth fact has “long been debated, investigated, and ultimately debunked.”

The so-called “fourth fact” where Jordan is claiming that Biden got Shokin fired to benefit his son or that this was a result of Hunter’s business dealings stems from the fact that Shokin was long regarded as being part of Ukraine’s legacy of corruption. At the time U.S. policy, dubbed by the Obama administration as “big hugs and little punches,” and EU policy was to apply pressure to have Shokin removed.

“Joe Biden’s actions were consistent with bipartisan U.S. policy, which sought to remove the prosecutor because he wasn’t doing enough to crack down on corruption — including at Burisma,” CNN noted in a fact check.

“The Obama administration, Senate Republicans, U.S. allies, the International Monetary Fund, and Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, among others, had all made clear that they were displeased with the performance of Viktor Shokin, who became Ukraine’s prosecutor general in 2015,” per CNN’s fact check, which concluded:

“Replacing Shokin would’ve ramped up scrutiny of Burisma, not shut it down. It is not even clear how aggressively Shokin was investigating Zlochevsky or Burisma at the time Joe Biden pushed for Shokin’s firing.”

And for those who remain doubtful, there’s this:

Christopher Miller, a prominent Western expert and author of The War Came To Us: Life and Death in Ukraine, wrote in September 2019 that “Shokin himself was the biggest obstacle standing in the way of” an investigation into Burisma.

Miller also wrote at the time that “There is a long list of Western organizations, governments, and diplomats, as well as Ukrainian anti-corruption groups, that wanted to see Shokin fired. They include the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, the U.S. government, foreign investors, and Ukrainian advocates of reform.”

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Hunter Biden’s connections with Burisma weren’t still questionable as his father worked on behalf of the Obama administration to fight corruption. “The credibility of the vice president’s anti-corruption message may have been undermined by the association of his son, Hunter Biden, with one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies, Burisma Holdings,” James Risen wrote for the New York Times in December of 2015, regarding Biden’s pressure campaign to curb corruption in Ukraine.

There is video of Biden boasting in 2018 about getting Shokin fired by warning that the U.S. would withhold aid, and of course, the conspiracy theorists, including Jordan continue to push this. In the clip, Biden says, “We’re leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a b*tch. He got fired.”

The Washington Post, in a report earlier this week, noted that Biden “called an audible,” Obama administration sources say, by tying U.S. aid (a $1 billion loan guarantee) to Shokin’s firing, but that the “Obama White House was firmly on board with the plan” as soon as Biden arrived in Kyiv.

Of course, former president Donald Trump has used the clip for his own purposes, especially during his first impeachment trial, after he himself was taped telling the Ukrainian president that he would withhold U.S. military aid to combat Russian-backed insurgents if he didn’t make public an announcement that an investigation would be launched into the Bidens.

“The Ukrainian Government just said they weren’t pressured at all during the ‘nice’ call. Sleepy Joe Biden, on the other hand forced a tough prosecutor out from investigating his son’s company by threat of not giving big dollars to Ukraine. That’s the real story!” he tweeted in September 2019.

..Breaking News: The Ukrainian Government just said they weren’t pressured at all during the “nice” call. Sleepy Joe Biden, on the other hand, forced a tough prosecutor out from investigating his son’s company by threat of not giving big dollars to Ukraine. That’s the real story!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 23, 2019

Trump and Co. used this claim repeatedly as a way to fight his impeachment while at the same time smearing Biden, his potential 2020 presidential rival at the time. And the U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in March 2021 that Russia was indeed interfering with the election by working with Trump and his cronies to promote such claims.

“We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the U.S.,” U.S. intelligence concluded, adding:

“The primary effort revolved around a narrative—that Russian actors began spreading as early as 2014—alleging corrupt ties between President Biden, his family, and other U.S. officials and Ukraine.”

Furthermore, Russian intelligence “relied on Ukraine—proxies and these proxies’ networks—including their U.S. contacts—to spread this narrative,” the intelligence agencies concluded.

So sure, the GOP might have some issues with Hunter Biden, but that fourth “fact” that Jordan is talking about is bunk. And it’s hilarious that he’s attacking President Biden when it’s clear what shenanigans Trump tried to pull in cahoots with Russia. Funny how Jordan & co. never talk about that.

Jim Jordan says there are 4 facts that prove Biden is guilty and should be impeached. #4 has been proven false over and over and over again!

And how can you impeach Biden for something he did BEFORE he was president? pic.twitter.com/5IhOmDo7G8

— Nicole Hickman James (@nicolejames) September 16, 2023