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Ex-FBI informant charged with lying about the Bidens says he got stories from Russian intelligence

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Will House Republican’s crusade to impeach President Joe Biden now totally collapse? In a bombshell development, the man accused of making false accusations about Hunter Biden and his father President Joe Biden now says Russian intelligence was involved in trying to hype the allegations. CBS News reports:

The man accused last week of delivering false allegations to federal investigators about Hunter Biden and President Biden’s business dealings told officials after his arrest that individuals “associated with Russian intelligence” were tied to apparent efforts to peddle a story about the first son, federal prosecutors revealed in a court filing Tuesday.

Alexander Smirnov was arrested last week after being charged with two counts that alleged he lied to the FBI. Special counsel David Weiss — the Trump-appointed prosecutor tasked with investigating the president’s son — accused Smirnov of providing his FBI handlers with fake allegations about Hunter and Mr. Biden in 2020. He claimed the two Bidens each accepted $5 million from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. The claims “were false, as the Defendant knew,” according to the charging documents filed against him.

A judge ordered on Tuesday that he be released from custody on a personal recognizance bond.

Smirnov’s attorneys, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, declined to comment further.

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.

Investigators said Smirnov first became an FBI informant in 2010, meeting with and speaking to federal officials until last year. He told his FBI handlers about his contacts with foreign intelligence services, “including Russian intelligence agencies, and has had such contacts recently,” prosecutors alleged in Tuesday’s filing, but he was ultimately deemed unreliable and indicted.

“Law enforcement knows about Smirnov’s contact with officials affiliated with Russian intelligence because Smirnov himself reported on a number of those contacts to his FBI Handler,” the special counsel’s team wrote. “These contacts are extensive and extremely recent, and Smirnov had the intention of meeting with one of these officials on his upcoming planned overseas travel.”

According to prosecutors, the ties he claimed to have with Russian intelligence officials presented “a serious risk he will flee in order to avoid accountability for his actions.”

House Republicans and Fox News hosts have repeatedly said a “reliable FBI informant” had sealed the case against Biden’s son and argued that Biden was also profiting from the alleged crimes.

CNN:

The former FBI informant charged with lying about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine told investigators after his arrest that Russian intelligence officials were involved in passing information to him about Hunter Biden, prosecutors said Tuesday in a new court filing, noting that the information was false.

Prosecutors also said Alexander Smirnov has been “actively peddling new lies that could impact US elections” after meeting with Russian spies late last year and that the fallout from his previous false bribery accusations about the Bidens “continue[s] to be felt to this day.”

Smirnov claims to have “extensive and extremely recent” contacts with foreign intelligence officials, prosecutors said in the filing. They said he previously told the FBI that he has longstanding and extensive contacts with Russian spies, including individuals he said were high-level intelligence officers or command Russian assassins abroad.

Prosecutors with special counsel David Weiss’ team said Tuesday that Smirnov has maintained those ties and noted that, in a post-arrest interview last week, “Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1,” referring to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

And:

….The explosive revelation comes amid backlash over how Smirnov’s now-debunked allegations played into House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president.

According to the new court filing, Smirnov told investigators he was in contact with “four different Russian officials,” all of whom are “top officials” and two of whom “are the heads of the entities they represent.” Prosecutors did not independently verify in the filing whether Smirnov’s reported contacts are legitimate, nor whether the Russians provided him with disinformation about the Bidens.

The false information that Smirnov reported “was not trivial,” prosecutors wrote.

“It targeted the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties in the United States. The effects of Smirnov’s false statements and fabricated information continue to be felt to this day,” prosecutors said, making an apparent reference to the turmoil in Congress over the discredited bribery allegations – which were a key element of the GOP impeachment probe.

Hunter Biden says special counsel used Alexander Smirnov’s discredited bribery claims to derail his plea deal
Of particular note is a story Smirnov allegedly told the FBI in September 2023, alleging that Hunter Biden was recorded making phone calls in a Kyiv hotel that is “wired” and “under the control of the Russians.” Federal agents said they knew Smirnov’s story was false because Hunter Biden has “never travelled to Ukraine.”

Smirnov told investigators Russian intelligence officers would use the hotel to intercept cell phone calls made by “prominent US persons,” prosecutors said, which the Russian government could use as “‘kompromat’ in the 2024 election, depending on who the candidates will be.” Kompromat is a Russian term that refers to compromising information used for blackmail.

The story, prosecutors noted, matches the story Smirnov told his handler about Hunter Biden being recorded in a foreign hotel.

“Thus, Smirnov’s efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States continues,” prosecutors wrote.


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