Alexander Smirnov was arrested in Las Vegas last week, and charged with lying to the FBI about Hunter Biden and and his father, US President Joe Biden.
His claims – that the Bidens got millions of dollars from a Ukrainian energy firm called Burisma, and which are a key plank in efforts by Republicans in the House of Representatives to impeach President Biden – were investigated and found to be false by the FBI in 2020.
So why arrest him now?
Because he had told his FBI handlers new information last September – information that the FBI checked and swiftly concluded was false. This information was designed to influence the outcome of the next Presidential election – the one taking place in November.
The false information was targeted at Joe Biden, whom the FBI describe as “the presumptive nominee of one of the two main political parties”. It says that when they interviewed Smirnov after his arrest on St Valentine’s Day, he told them the information came from “officials associated with Russian intelligence”.
So what are these new claims?
Smirnov apparently told both his FBI handler and also “investigators and prosecutors” that Russian intelligence had recorded “Kompromat” on Hunter Biden in a hotel in Kyiv.
Specifically he claimed the Hotel Premier Palace in Kyiv is “wired” and under the control of Russians, who can record mobile phone and landline calls made in the hotel. He urged the “investigators and prosecutors” to check if Hunter Biden had made phone calls from that hotel – in which case they were almost certainly recorded.
He told the FBI the “Kompromat” could be used against Joe Biden if he is the presidential candidate in the autumn.
Smirnov said he had seen video of Hunter Biden entering that hotel, and that Hunter Biden had been there many times. He said he had obtained the information a month earlier by calling a “high level official in a foreign country”. He also claimed four Russian officials had also told him this information.
But the Department of Justice (DoJ) said in their court filing in Nevada last night: “Investigators know that Smirnov’s new story is false because Businessman 1 (the term they use for Hunter Biden) has never travelled to Ukraine”.
Most important is the timing of the new information emerging to FBI and DoJ prosecutors last summer.
Yesterday, in another courtroom in the east coast state of Delaware, lawyers for Hunter Biden made another filing in the DoJ case against him there, accusing the government of collapsing a plea bargain deal they and the special prosecutor had negotiated, which was due for sign off in late July.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers claim the government started to push back against the deal – which would have seen Hunter Biden essentially get the probation act for tax evasion and unlawful possession of a handgun – because they were hearing of the new claims from Smirnov, claims that prosecutors decided needed to be investigated.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers wrote in their filing yesterday: “Having taken Mr Smirnov’s bait of grand, sensational charges, the Diversion Agreement that had just been entered into and the Plea Agreement that was on the verge of being finalised suddenly became inconvenient for the prosecution, and it reversed course and repudiated those agreements”.
The upshot of that reversal is that rather than putting an end to the Hunter Biden investigation last summer, the DoJ is now proceeding to trials that could see the President’s son in criminal courts during the presidential election campaign in the autumn – which would look bad for Joe Biden, and could impact the outcome of the election.
These are sensational claims. But they are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the extraordinary tale of Alexander Smirnov, as outlined to a court in Nevada last night in a government memorandum in support of continued detention for Smirnov, pending trial.
The memorandum makes clear Smirnov was a spy, working for at least one government, possibly more. It says “Smirnov lied to his FBI handler after a 10-year relationship where the two spoke nearly every day”.
Whatever Smirnov was up to, it was also apparently lucrative work, with the memorandum stating that Smirnov has liquid assets of just over $6 million in two bank accounts in California. Much of it appeared to have come from venture capital companies.
The cash is one of the arguments the US government made against releasing Smirnov on bail. Others are that his foreign intelligence contacts could help him evade justice abroad, and that as he is a joint US/Israeli citizen, even handing in his two passports would not prevent him from going to an Israeli consulate and getting a new passport.
The memorandum recounts a career as an intelligence informant of the FBI stretching from 2010 to now. And most sensationally, it sets out details of a series of meetings he had with Russian spies, Russian oligarchs – and allegedly a man who runs two Russian assassination teams.
Smirnov also told the FBI he has been involved over the past four months in covert negotiations aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, and had planned to leave the US on 16 February, two days after arriving, to arrange a prisoner of war swap between Russia and Ukraine, which would take place in a third country.
Now the Department of Justice has blown Smirnov’s cover, putting pages of information into the public domain that detail – albeit without naming names – some of the intelligence reports he had been making to his handler over the past year or so, including naming Russian oligarchs, apparently with intelligence connections, who were going to party on a mega yacht for the birthday of an individual from a Middle Eastern country last October, to detailing a November meeting with “Russian Official 1”:
One report stated: “During these conversations, RUSSIAN OFFICIAL 1 discussed his knowledge of and seeming control of two groups of Russian operatives who were previously tasked with the assassination of a high-ranking official of COUNTRY C. RUSSIAN OFFICIAL 1 offered to stop the assassination efforts in exchange for certain things, including an agreement by COUNTRY C to stop targeting civilian-family- members of certain Russian officials living in Moscow.”
According to the memorandum, Smirnov provided his FBI handler with a copy of “Russian official 1’s” passport.
People have fallen out of windows in Moscow for less, so by putting all this information out there, the US government is making life uncomfortable for Smirnov. But the case for even “protective custody” failed, and last night with the judge releasing Smirnov on bail, with electronic monitoring and confinement to Clarke Country, Nevada.
The memorandum was submitted to the court by David Weiss, a special counsel at the Department of Justice. A Republican, he was appointed under the Trump presidency to investigate corruption claims against Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
After five years he charged Hunter Biden with a firearms offence in Delaware, and a number of tax felonies in California. Those charges came after the plea bargain described above fell apart last summer.
Now Weiss is prosecuting one of his own sources. That is embarrassing for Weiss – but it is also embarrassing for a number of MAGA aligned Republican congressmen who have previously cited Smirnov’s claims as “compelling evidence” that the Bidens were involved in corrupt business dealings with Burisma – among them Representatives Jim Jordan, James Comer and Nancy Mace.
They are preparing the way for an impeachment of President Biden, using the committee system to search for evidence.
At the same time, a faction in the Republican House caucus is blocking a bill to provide $60 million of military aid to Ukraine from moving through the lower house of Congress.
Committee members have even accused the FBI of being complicit in a plot for not prosecuting Hunter Biden based on its own agent’s testimony. Smirnov, an agent that the FBI rejected as unreliable in 2020, and is now prosecuting for his latest testimony, testimony which the Feds now regard as disinformation designed to affect the outcome of the next presidential election.
