A Biden accuser was discredited. Right-wing media will not be deterred.

Fox News star Jeanine Pirro spoke about the issue on “Hannity” Thursday night. “There’s Smirnov, who was a respected confidential informant at the FBI for 10 years,” she said. “They paid him money, he was so credible. Now suddenly, a few months ago, they decide, ‘Oh, he’s not credible,’ because he’s claiming that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden were working on an issue.”

Margot Cleveland, a correspondent at The Federalist, a right-wing online outlet, argued that David C. Weiss, the special counsel who investigated Hunter Biden, and who indicted Mr Smirnov last week, is the guilty party. Ms. Cleveland said that Mr. Weiss’s failure to look into the informant’s background earlier had allowed him to continue “working to interfere in our elections and who knows what else lies to the FBI.”

“One thing is certain,” Ms. Cleveland wrote, “even if Smirnov is guilty, that does not absolve Weiss.”

Others insisted the case against the Bidens was still solid. The Daily Caller drew a comparison between Mr. Smirnov and Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose allegations of collusion between Russia and Mr. Trump during the 2016 election were widely discussed in the news media. Why, the newspaper thought, was Mr. Steele not accused of lying to the government?

Efforts over several years by Republicans in Congress to advance their claims that Mr. Biden and his son accepted bribes or were involved in corrupt dealings have been repeatedly shot down or failed to produce credible evidence. That didn’t stop a writer from The Gateway Pundit, a digital outlet that regularly covers conspiracies embraced by the right, from claiming that Mr. Smirnov’s credibility was in fact impeccable, and that his claims still hold true.

“Alexander Smirnov has NEVER ‘spread Russian disinformation,’” wrote Cristina Laila, editor-in-chief. “No one is falling for the Russia Hoax 2.0 you are peddling.”