The story surrounding a former FBI informant accused of lying to federal investigators about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s accepting bribes from a Ukrainian energy company has become even more curious.
Prosecutors allege that Alexander Smirnov, the individual who first accused the Bidens of accepting $5 million each, had communicated with members of Russian intelligence.
In a court memo unsuccessfully urging a judge overseeing the case to keep Smirnov behind bars pending trial, prosecutors wrote Tuesday that after he was arrested last week for lying, "Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1." Businessperson 1 appears to align with Hunter Biden.
Prosecutors did not say whether Smirnov's claims about the apparent ties to Russian intelligence have ever been substantiated.
However, it's already publicly known that Smirnov had communicated with members of Russian intelligence. RedState's Managing Editor Jennifer Van Laar broke the story that Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky was a known member of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) in June 2023. As Van Laar reported, a member of a US national security agency said:
“The US intelligence community has a high degree of confidence in their assessment of Zlochevsky as SVR. This is not a new assessment; the intelligence community under Obama knew this, and Obama was briefed on it. Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland were briefed as well.”
This means that the FBI knew Smirnov was in contact with Russian intelligence at the time they were using him as a confidential human source. It apparently wasn't a problem then, but now prosecutors insisted that Smirnov’s dual citizenship and ties to Russian intelligence indicated that he could be a flight risk.
Prosecutors asked for Mr Smirnov, a dual US-Israeli citizen, to be held without bail, arguing that he has no ties to Las Vegas, but does have contacts with Russian intelligence agencies.
The justice department says that he disclosed his contacts to his FBI handler, saying he could use those connections - which prosecutors described as " extensive and extremely recent" - to leave the US.
In December 2023, the legal filing says, Mr Smirnov attended an overseas meeting with "a high-ranking member of a specific Russian foreign intelligence service".
Mr Smirnov told his FBI handler that he learned Russian intelligence had intercepted "several" phone calls made at a certain hotel by prominent US people, according to the justice department.
The hotel is not named in this section of the court filing.
Mr Smirnov allegedly said the recordings could be used as "kompromat" (compromising material) during the 2024 election campaign.
Last Thursday, the initial indictment against Smirnov was revealed. The Justice Department contends that Smirnov falsified information about Joe and Hunter receiving bribes from Burisma.
The indictment alleges that Smirnov “provided false derogatory information” about Biden and his son. The document refers to the president as “Public Official 1” and Hunter as “Businessperson 1.”
Despite repeated admonishments that he must provide truthful information to the FBI and that he must not fabricate evidence, the Defendant provided false derogatory information to the FBI about Public Official 1, an elected official in the Obama-Biden Administration who left office in January 2017, and Businessperson 1, the son of Public Official 1, in 2020, after Public Official 1 became a candidate for President of the United States of America.
Smirnov was arrested at the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada, after arriving from overseas.
The indictment also says Smirnov “transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against Public Official 1, the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against Public Official 1 and his candidacy.”
As this story develops, the impact on America’s political landscape will become more evident. As President Biden seeks to win a second term in office there could be even more revelations that surface. House Republicans are right in the middle of an impeachment inquiry intended to find out the extent to which the president was involved in his family’s shady business dealings. While removing Biden is pretty much out of the question, the focus will be on the information that comes from the proceedings. If there is fire where there is smoke, it might be enough to cost Biden his second term.