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Good morning, everyone. I'm Playbook co-author, Ryan Lizza. It's Wednesday, February 21st.

The House Republican plan to impeach President Joe Biden suffered an embarrassing blow last week

when an informant, Alexander Smyranov, was indicted

for lying to the FBI about an alleged Biden family bribery scheme that Republicans have loudly

touted. Well, now the Justice Department says that not only was the informant's entire story

made up, but prosecutors allege that during an interview

when he was arrested, Smyranov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence,

that's their language, were involved in manufacturing a story about Hunter Biden.

Even before this news, the House impeachment effort had already been losing steam.

Representative James Comer, the Kentucky Republican leading the effort, said recently that a vote

might not happen at all, given the Republican's tiny margin. And many Republicans suddenly

seem more interested in talking about Joe Biden's age rather than his son Hunter.

In Biden's orbit, the potential Russian connection to this case was greeted with outrage.

They happily spread Russian disinformation without even applying the slightest scrutiny because of knee-jerk partisanship.

The person close to the president told

Playbook last night, if they continue on a Biden impeachment, it will not go well for them.

We have new campaign finance numbers this morning that are allowing us to peer inside the

operations of Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, and Joe Biden. Joining me now to discuss those filings is FEC

Whiz and state politics reporter, Zach Montalaro. Good morning, Zach. Hey, Ryan, good morning.

Zach, start with the universe of campaign committees that presidential candidates now use to run their campaigns.

And then we're going to sort of drill down into which of those committees we have this new

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