The FBI and DOJ’s ‘politically motivated’ persecution of a former informant — all to protect the Bidens
One of the most disturbing scandals of the Hunter Biden saga is the imprisonment without trial of former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov.
The Ukrainian-born Israeli-American, who once told his FBI handler about Ukrainian claims of a $10 million bribe to the Bidens, has been languishing in a Los Angeles prison for nine months on charges that he lied to the FBI.
Last week, federal prosecutors slapped new tax-evasion charges on Smirnov, 43, which suggests they know their original indictment is too weak for a jury to convict him when he faces trial beginning Jan. 8.
Smirnov was one of the FBI’s most trusted confidential human sources, paid more than $100,000 during what his lawyers call “undivided, years-long loyalty to the United States” before he was thrown to the wolves in the middle of the Biden impeachment inquiry.
Busted in February
He was arrested in February on charges that he “provided false derogatory information to the FBI in 2020 about Joseph Biden, who at the time was a candidate for president and had previously been the vice president.
“The alleged false information concerned Joseph Biden’s and his son Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma Holdings Ltd., a Ukrainian energy business.”
When the FBI searched Smirnov’s Las Vegas apartment, they found “a hat emblazoned with an anti- [Biden] euphemism” — presumably “Let’s Go Brandon” — which the indictment says demonstrates “bias” against Joe Biden and “bears on the defendant’s motive in providing the FBI with false derogatory information about” Joe.
Joe managed to evade impeachment over his family’s influence-peddling schemes — in part because of the Smirnov indictment — and is expected either to pardon his son or commute Hunter’s twin sentences next month in felony gun and tax-fraud cases.
Yet it is Smirnov who is under indictment, when he merely relayed to his FBI handler a conversation he claimed to have had about Hunter with Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma.
The corrupt energy company at the time was paying the then-vice president’s crackhead son $1 million a year.
There is no direct evidence that Joe and Hunter were paid $10 million by the Burisma owner to order the removal in 2016 of Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma, as Smirnov claimed he was told by Zlochevsky.
But since when does an FBI informant have to guarantee that the raw intelligence he provides to his handler is 100% factual, on threat of criminal prosecution?
That’s a surefire way to ensure nobody will ever be an FBI informant.
It’s up to the FBI to investigate allegations provided by confidential human sources like Smirnov. Obviously.
Handler’s mistakes
But the case against Smirnov is that he did not tell his FBI handler the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
His lawyers have told the court that any inconsistencies in his information as recorded by the FBI were not lies told by him, but errors made by his handler, whom they accuse of “shoddy work and negligent record keeping.”
Smirnov’s handler memorialized his reports in an FBI form called an FD-1023, which is used to record unverified reporting from informants.
When Smirnov told his handler in 2017 that Hunter Biden was mentioned during a conversation he had with Zlochevsky, the handler recorded it on an FD-1023 as “brief [and] nonrelevant” to the FBI’s “kleptocracy” investigation that Smirnov was assisting. The “kleptocracy” probe into Zlochevsky, coincidentally or not, was closed by the FBI Washington Field Office in December 2019, the same month the FBI took possession of Hunter’s laptop computer containing all sorts of incriminating evidence about Burisma’s relationship with the Bidens.
In January 2020, with the Democratic presidential campaign in full swing, then-Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady was tasked by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to vet the torrent of allegations about Biden corruption that were pouring into the DOJ, including from then-President Donald Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
Brady found the brief mention of Hunter and Burisma in the Smirnov handler’s FD-1023 from 2017.
Smirnov was reinterviewed by the FBI for a new FD-1023 and elaborated on his conversation with Zlochevsky, adding the bombshell allegation of the $10 million bribe.
Brady judged the allegations sufficiently credible to send the Smirnov file for further review to Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, who was in charge of the five-year investigation into Hunter over potential tax, money-laundering and foreign-agent violations.
But Weiss concealed the Smirnov file and never mentioned the allegations to IRS agents conducting the investigation, Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler.
When the IRS agents blew the whistle to Congress in 2023 about the DOJ’s obstruction, slow walking and political favoritism to Joe and Hunter, Shapley testified that the Smirnov file would have “likely been material to the ongoing criminal investigation of Hunter Biden . . .
“As a result of the information being concealed by prosecutors from the IRS [and] FBI investigators assigned to this investigation, we were unable to follow alleged criminal activity as would normally be completed.”
It was only when an FBI whistleblower gave a copy of the Smirnov FD-1023 to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in 2023 that the allegations came to light.
After the IRS whistleblowers came forward, a sweetheart deal Weiss had stitched up with Hunter fell apart, and Attorney General Merrick Garland elevated Weiss to special counsel investigating Hunter.
This meant Weiss would be investigating his own conduct.
Seven months later, special counsel Weiss indicted Smirnov.
In a pretrial motion, Smirnov’s lawyers anticipate prosecution efforts to “dirty him up” as a “Russian spy,” “unpatriotic” and a “double agent.”
It’s a dubious claim considering that Smirnov was paid by the FBI to spy on Russians as recently as 2023.
Smirnov’s arrest in February came at a convenient time for the Bidens and successfully blunted the attack by House Republicans hoping to impeach Joe.
Hunter gleefully cited Smirnov when he testified to the impeachment committee earlier this year claiming “Smirnov . . . has made you dupes in carrying out a Russian disinformation campaign waged against my father.”
Dem’s false claim
The claim was enthusiastically echoed by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who falsely claimed that Smirnov was the impeachment inquiry’s “star witness” and used him to besmirch the damning evidence the inquiry had unearthed of Joe’s involvement in his family’s corrupt schemes as having “a very strong whiff of a Russian intelligence operation.” That old chestnut.
Smirnov’s Las Vegas lawyers have subpoenaed Hunter’s former partner Devon Archer as a witness, suggesting the Bidens’ foreign influence-peddling schemes will play a role in their defense.
Attorneys David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld claim Smirnov, who suffers from the eye disease glaucoma, has been subjected to cruel punishment in prison, with authorities refusing to give him the eyedrops he needs to save his sight.
They are preparing to accuse the DOJ and FBI of conducting an unlawful “politically motivated” prosecution of their client to protect the Bidens, according to their pretrial motions.
Expect the FBI and Justice Department to be as much on trial as Smirnov in Los Angeles District Court Judge Otis Wright’s courtroom in January.
