GOP Rep. Ken Buck, who has shown at least a small amount of spine since announcing he's not seeking reelection next year, tossed his Putin-loving GOP cohorts right under the bus after their star witness for the Biden impeachment inquiry turned out to be a Russian intelligence asset.

Comer and Jordan have been running to right wing media pretending they didn't know any better, but Buck shot those excuses down during an interview with CNN's Kaitlan Collins:

A GOP congressman admitted that he and other lawmakers probing President Joe Biden and his son's actions to build up an impeachment inquiry were aware the key witness testimony in the case was shaky.

With the star witness in the impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden facing felonies for cooking up a bogus story shaped by high-level Russian intelligence contacts pinning the president and his son Hunter for taking $5 million apiece in bribes — Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) came forward to acknowledge that they knew it wasn't solid well in advance.

With Alexander Smirnov being accused of telling tall tales to the FBI, only to turn around and admit that "officials with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story" about Hunter Biden — Buck, who isn't running for reelection, appeared on CNN's "The Source" with Kaitlan Collins stressed that the revelation wasn't a surprise to him.

Here's the exchange with Collins:

COLLINS: Looking at what you said last September, you were condemning your own party’s impeachment efforts, saying that “Republicans in the House who are itching for an impeachment inquiry are relying on an imagined history.” Did you ever think that it would collapse in this spectacular of a fashion?

BUCK: Well, Kaitlan, it’s even more of an imagined history now. Obviously, this witness, and we were warned at the time that we received the document outlining this witness’s testimony, we were warned that the credibility of this statement was not known.

And yet people, my colleagues, went out and talk to the public about how this was credible and how it was damning and how it proved President Biden’s – at the time Vice President Biden’s – complicity in receiving bribes.

It appears to absolutely be false and to really undercut the nature of the charges. We’ve always been looking for a link between what Hunter Biden received in terms of money and Joe Biden’s activities or Joe Biden receiving money. This clearly is not a credible link at this point.

COLLINS: So, James Comer and Jim Jordan, they knew that this was not corroborated information, yet they still went public with it, talked about it on television, used it to fuel these investigations regardless?

BUCK: That’s what it appears. I certainly didn’t have any evidence outside the statement itself that it was credible, and as a prosecutor for twenty five years, Kaitlan, I never went to the public until I could prove the reliability of a statement.

And even then, the only one public statement a prosecutor makes is the charging document. Let’s see what the evidence is in this impeachment, if there is more evidence before going forward.

Buck told Collins he was still "open" to hearing what other "evidence" they might have to try to impeach Biden, and defended his vote for the "inquiry."

He knows it's all crap but still can't quite bring himself to admit it in public. I'm guessing the death threats he got over voting against Gym for Speaker might have something to do with it.

Republicans have become the party of Putin and thugs. If they're going to put up with death threats for even mild criticism anyway, as Buck has on numerous occasions, it would be nice to see some of them finally just admit what their party has become and quit pretending it's worth salvaging.