FBI Informant Charged with Lying about Bidens
An unsurprising twist.
Via the AP: FBI informant charged with lying about Joe and Hunter Biden’s ties to Ukrainian energy company.
An FBI informant has been charged with fabricating a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company, a claim that is central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.
Alexander Smirnov falsely reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016, prosecutors said in an indictment. Smirnov told his handler that an executive claimed to have hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems,” according to court documents.
Granting that he has only been indicted and not convicted, this certainly looks like a huge blow to the notion that House Republicans have much of a leg to stand on in their impeachment inquiry into Biden.
But, of course,
Comer, R-Ky., downplayed the importance of the informant, who had figured centrally to the start of the probe.
“To be clear, the impeachment inquiry is not reliant on the FBI’s FD-1023,” Comer said in a statement, referring to the form documenting Smirnov’s allegations.
The chairman said the inquiry “is based on a large record of evidence, including bank records and witness testimony,” including interviews this week. He said the committee will continue to “follow the facts” and determine whether to proceed with articles of impeachment against Biden.
I would note that Comer here seems to be dismissing Smirnov, rather than suggesting that the charges are in error (granted, he may have said so elsewhere and it is dangerous to infer too much from one quote). Still, as Philip Bump in WaPo reminds us, Comer made a big deal about Smirnov in the past:
At the beginning of May, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to the Justice Department making a stunning accusation: Evidence existed of “an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.” The letter called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to make the “verifiable, valuable” evidence public.
For several months, Comer in particular publicly pushed for the release of an FBI interview form documenting the allegation — an allegation provided to the bureau by an informant who claimed to have been told about the bribe by a Ukrainian businessman. Grassley slowly leaked out new details from the interview document, such as a claim that there might be telephone recordings of the parties involved in the alleged bribe, including President Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Eventually, Grassley released the whole document.
As it turns out, the Justice Department was working on the verifiability of the allegation. On Thursday, it unsealed an indictment: The informant who alleged that he’d been told about the bribe had allegedly made the whole thing up.
[…]
It is hard to overstate how much energy Republicans and their allies in the right-wing media invested in the idea that this was credible. When he announced the launch of an impeachment probe of Biden in September, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) invoked the Smirnov allegation.
I wrote about the way Fox News Channel was covering the supposedly explosive allegations back in June: The Fox Propaganda Machine in Operation.
I will state that the documentary evidence that Comer, et al. have shared with the public has been unwhelming. By their logic, every son who has ever gotten a loan from a parent (or brother to a brother) is involved in some kind of dastardly scheme.
It has been patently obvious from the beginning that the House impeachment inquiry into Biden has been nothing more than political payback for the fact that Trump was impeached (twice, in fact). It has also been obvious from the beginning that there is no factual basis for it.
Nonetheless, I am sure that the propaganda machines are all spitting out the notion that Smirnov’s indictment proves that he was telling the truth! Up is down, black is white, and we will all get killed at the next zebra crossing.
Sigh.
If people believe the Bidens had a dead drop in their own home, they’ll believe they tried to hide money by moving it around in checks made by one Biden in the name of another Biden, and in amounts large enough to be deposited rather than cashed.
I don’t want to get into how one hides money, but I’ll give a hint: the Pablo Escobar organization spent thousands of dollars per month on rubber bands.
@Kathy:
Rubber bands and shrink wrap were an important part of business expenses in my youth.
Remembering a conversation at last year’s 50th reunion (wa!), when the conversation got around to the drug scene in Seattle in the day. I mentioned knowing of a number of homes where the walls were insulated with wrapped stacks of c-notes. One classmate sighed, and admitted that unfortunately, the rats had discovered the $$$ in their Rainier Valley remodel before their contractors did.
It won’t slow down the train at all. They’ll just say the FBI has been weaponized by old Joe.
So, yet another attempt to make something out Burisma turns out to be a turnip-ghost?
I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you! *not shocked*
@Flat Earth Luddite:
That’s wasteful. stacks of $2 notes provide the same insulation. And if found, most people don’t even know they are legal tender.
Not to mention that the ghost of resigned in disgrace Republican ex-President Richard M. Nixon has been whispering a plea for vengeance into the ears of Republican toadies since 1974:
Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.
The whole scandal ranks right up there with the Clintons being ripped off by Jim McDougal and yet somehow conspiring on his behalf to keep the fraud going. Hunter Biden was spiraling into addiction, sleeping with his dead brother’s widow, and blowing through everything. And yet here’s Joe Biden, who isn’t at all worried about his son ODing in some boutique hotel room. Nope, he wants a piece of the action.
@OzarkHillbilly:
May not work with swing voters. The same Trump-appointed Special Counsel who is prosecuting Hunter Biden charged Republicans’ informant with lying.
Blaming Biden and the FBI will work on the deplorables, sure. But they’re not enough.
As that great political sage Jimmy Kimmel pointed out last night, 20% of people will believe anything.
James Comer is the kind of guy who, back around 1980 or so, would have joined a MAGA Youth group, if such a group existed.
And Chuck Grassley? He’s 90 years old now, and I’m not sure anyone has wasted more time in the Senate than Grassley. He first ran on term limits back in 1980, but has simce – to the shock of Iowa voters, who by the way continue to re-elect him – failed to term himself out. .
I suspect that the reason Comer et al are so blasé about the revelation that their star witness was lying all along is because they knew it from the start…
It would seem the best proof of one’s innocence about almost anything is to be investigated by the Republicans.
Steve
I think Smirnov told people stuff they wanted to hear, and those people didn’t think very hard about whether he was lying or not.
I mean, that sort of thing has happened to me more than once. No, I don’t like it when I find out about it. If I were a politician, though, I wouldn’t let that show…
@Kathy:
The people I knew didn’t want to take $2 bills for the quantities of drugs they were dealing with, especially given the amount of paper they were having to launder and/or hide. These days, it’s hard to visualize just how much cash was floating around looking for a warm place to spend the night.
The whole “impeachment inquiry” has been a monumental farce, with one witness after another confirming that no, the president wasn’t involved in any of his son’s business affairs, following which Comer goes on Fox and virtually accuses them of lying. But this latest episode is extraordinary; the FBI dismissed Smirnov’s allegations as worthless back in 2020 and filed the memo. Grassley insisted they do a proper investigation and they found the whole thing was a fabrication.
It would be a delightful plot twist if it turns out Smirnov only flew back to America because Comer invited him to be his star witness in the impeachment inquiry’s grand finale.