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<http://wsj.com>
Former FBI Informant Accused of Lying About Bidens Claimed Russian
Intelligence Contacts
C. Ryan Barber and Aruna Viswanatha


A former FBI informant accused of making false bribery allegations against President Biden and his son Hunter had "extensive and extremely recent" contacts with foreign intelligence services, including Russia's, federal prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday.

In the 28-page filing, federal prosecutors detailed Alexander Smirnov's contacts with Russian intelligence to argue that he should remain in
custody as he confronts an indictment that appeared to undercut corruption allegations that Republicans have long levied against the president.
Lawyers for Smirnov, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, said in their filing
that the government had seized his U.S. passport, but that he would
surrender his Israeli passport and submit to electronic monitoring, among
other conditions. A federal magistrate judge ordered his release Tuesday
during a detention hearing in Nevada, according to the court docket.

The dueling memos underscore the unusual nature of Smirnov's case. After
years of sensitive work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in which
he relayed conversations he had with a Russian official who purportedly
oversaw assassinations in another country, he now stands accused of trying
to manufacture a false corruption case against the president.

"The Government knew about Mr. Smirnov's alleged conduct for years-yet
took no steps to end his cooperation, seize his passports, or prosecute
him for anything," Smirnov's lawyers wrote.

Federal prosecutors said Smirnov, 43, had spoken with his FBI handler
nearly every day for 10 years before relaying a false bribery claim
against President Biden and his son. Smirnov had told the FBI, in June
2020, that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma
had said they paid $5 million each to Joe and Hunter Biden, while the
former was vice president, to protect the company from an investigation by
the country's prosecutor general at the time.

Those events "were fabrications," prosecutors said. Earlier in 2020,
Smirnov texted harsh criticism of Biden to his FBI handler, including that
he was "going to jail," and that Democrats had "tried to impeach [then-President Donald Trump] for same," according to the indictment.

The Tuesday court filing shed additional light on Smirnov with details
about his time as a confidential FBI informant and his relationships with figures associated with foreign intelligence. Among those figures,
according to the filing, is a Russian official whom Smirnov described "as
the son of a former high-ranking Russian government official, someone who purportedly controls two groups of individuals tasked with carrying out assassination efforts in a third-party country."

Smirnov reported to his FBI handler that he met with the Russian official, identified in the court filing as Russian Official 1, as recently as
December 2023. During their purported meeting, the official described an operation that the head of a Russian intelligence unit ran at a "club" at
a hotel, according to the court filing.

In his telling to his FBI handler, Smirnov said Russian intelligence intercepted mobile phone calls made by guests of the hotel, including ones "placed by prominent U.S. persons the Russian government may use as
'kompromat' in the 2024 election, depending on who the candidates will
be," prosecutors wrote.

That account appeared to mirror what Smirnov told FBI officials during a September 2023 meeting referenced in his indictment last week.

Smirnov urged investigators during the meeting to examine whether Hunter Biden-identified in the court filing as Businessperson 1-was recorded in a hotel in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, called the Premier Palace. He described
it as "wired" and said he had seen video footage of Hunter Biden entering
the hotel.

"Investigators know that Smirnov's new story is false because
Businessperson 1 has never traveled to Ukraine," prosecutors said.

They added that Smirnov's remarks to investigators showed "that the misinformation he is spreading isn't confined to 2020."

"According to Smirnov, the Russians want Ukraine to assist in influencing
the U.S. election, and Smirnov thinks the tapes of Businessperson 1 at the Premier Palace Hotel is all they have," prosecutors wrote. "Thus,
Smirnov's efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the
two major parties in the United States continues," they added.

In a strange twist, the indictment against Smirnov was secured by
prosecutors working under David Weiss, the special counsel who is
separately behind a pair of criminal cases against Hunter Biden. The
younger Biden has pleaded not guilty in those two cases to gun and tax
charges.

In the gun case, Hunter Biden's lawyer Abbe Lowell argued in a court
filing Tuesday that Weiss's team had followed Smirnov down "his rabbit
hole of lies" and "resuscitated the baseless investigation of Mr.
Smirnov's ridiculous claims" in response to pressure from Republicans.

"It now seems clear that the Smirnov allegations infected this case,"
Lowell wrote.

Smirnov's allegations against the president and his son were memorialized
in an internal FBI report that Republicans obtained last year and touted
in their inquiry into the Biden family's financial dealings.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) publicly released a copy of the record and, without naming Smirnov, described the claims as "very significant
allegations from a trusted F.B.I. informant implicating then-Vice
President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme."

But, in the court filing Tuesday, prosecutors cast Smirnov as an incessant
liar who couldn't be trusted even to provide accurate information about
his own finances while he faces criminal charges.

Since his arrest last week at a Las Vegas airport on his return from
overseas travel, Smirnov failed to disclose to court officials that he has access to millions of dollars, prosecutors said. Smirnov instead told
those officials that he only had $1,500 in cash on hand and $5,000 in a personal checking account.

His access to "$6 million in liquid funds," prosecutors said, is "more
than enough money for him to live comfortably overseas for the rest of his life."

Write to C. Ryan Barber at ryan.barber@wsj.com and Aruna Viswanatha at aruna.viswanatha@wsj.com

Appeared in the February 21, 2024, print edition as 'Ex-FBI Informant Is
Linked to Russian Spy'.



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