Ex-FBI informant charged with lying about Bidens will appear in court as judge weighs his detention https://t.co/17oNV6XFoH
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 26, 2024
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former FBI informant charged with fabricating a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden’s family is set to appear in a California federal court on Monday as a judge considers whether he must remain behind bars while he awaits trial.
Special counsel David Weiss’ office is pressing U.S. District Judge Otis Wright II to keep Alexander Smirnov in jail, arguing the man who claims to have ties to Russian intelligence is likely to flee the country.
A different judge last week released Smirnov from jail on electronic GPS monitoring, but Wright ordered the man to be re-arrested after prosecutors asked to reconsider Smirnov’s detention. Wright said in a written order that Smirnov’s lawyers’ efforts to free him was “likely to facilitate his absconding from the United States.”…
Smirnov had been an informant for more than a decade when he made the explosive allegations about the Bidens in June 2020, after “expressing bias” about Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, prosecutors said. Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Burisma starting in 2017, according to court documents. No evidence has emerged that Joe Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice president.
While his identity wasn’t publicly known before the indictment, Smirnov’s claims have played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark what is now a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. Republicans pursuing investigations of the Bidens demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if they were true.
Repubs insist being hoist on their own petard has greatly improved their viewing angle!…
This would be a good time to remind everyone that both the Mueller report & the Senate Intelligence Committee found "sweeping, systematic" Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Dim or disloyal? Republicans again ensnared in possible Russian plot.https://t.co/u7BrPYkA5E
— Bill (@MurderedHornet) February 25, 2024
Another banger from Jen Rubin, at the Washington Post — “Dim or disloyal? Republicans again ensnared in possible Russian plot”: [gift link]
Are Republicans easy marks or willing participants in Russian anti-Biden operations? That’s a troubling question raised by the Feb. 14 grand jury indictment of a former FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, on charges of concocting a tale about President Biden’s supposed involvement in his family members’ business dealings.
Allegations by Smirnov — who appears to have ties to Russian intelligence, according to the federal indictment — have formed the backbone of the House Republicans’ laughable attempt to build an impeachment case against the president. They championed him as their star witness. Now the Republicans’ fact-deficient storyline has been shredded.
The Post reported that Smirnov, who has not entered a plea yet, is accused of “making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record” by trying to implicate Biden in corruption related to his son Hunter Biden’s involvement with the Ukraine energy company Burisma. “The charges,” the article said, “amount to a stark rebuke of conservatives, particularly Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, who touted Smirnov’s claims as he and other Republican lawmakers tried to build a corruption case against the president and his family.”
Even more damning, The Post subsequently reported that “Smirnov’s indictment and detention memo suggest the allegations were not only false, but possibly a Russian-inspired smear.”…
Now Republicans are pretending that Smirnov wasn’t so important after all. They’re vowing to plow ahead on this cock-and-bull mission that never got off the ground. Not only did multiple witnesses testify that Biden had no involvement with his son’s business dealings, but previous allegations that Biden acted on his son’s behalf had also already been thoroughly repudiated.
The current House debacle overlaps with a Russian disinformation project described by the national security specialists Ryan Goodman and Asha Rangappa on the website Just Security in 2020. That scheme enticed Republican Sens. Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa) to buy into the now-discredited scenario that as vice president Biden sought on behalf of his son to stop an investigation of Burisma. (It also added in another phony Ukraine election interference claim.)
And let’s not forget that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found “sweeping and systematic” Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election on Donald Trump’s behalf….
Republicans have built their entire oversight operation on rooting out the “weaponization of government” as a tool for accusing Democrats of misdeeds. Talk about projection. As former FBI agent Rangappa told me, “It seems like Comer’s impeachment inquiry is the real ‘weaponization committee’ — weaponized by Russia, that is.”
Republicans’ affinity over multiple elections for Russian-backed plots should warrant wall-to-wall coverage. (Let us not forget Russian efforts detailed in the Mueller report to enlist the Trump campaign and sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016.) Responsible news outlets should press House Republicans to justify their refusal to vote for aid for Ukraine and habit of spreading Russian conspiracy theories…
Jessica: I'm surprised that Comer and Jordan have this high of a threshold for humiliation. pic.twitter.com/0dUrHEi15y
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 21, 2024
It’s Hard to Convince People that You’re Killing Them for Their Own Good
Wapiti
So if this Smirnoff/Smirnov person is a lying sack of shit *and* has been an informant for the FBI for 10 years, what other damage has been done? Anybody in prison because of his lies?
Old School
Is that Smirnov’s lawyer covering her face as well?
danielx
@Wapiti:
He was being saved for a special occasion.
Villago Delenda Est
The headline says it all.
Villago Delenda Est
Apparently, this would not be good for clicks/ratings. Also, too, the billionaire parasites want to destroy democracy.
TaMara
As of a few minutes ago, he has been ordered to remain in custody by the CA judge. Enjoy jail and stay away from any open upper floor windows. Your boss is probably not pleased.
SpaceUnit
They’re willing participants. Republicans are willing participants and so is much of our MSM.
This shit is 1000 worse than 9/11and our national press wants to look the other way.
SiubhanDuinne
Sorry, I don’t know who Jessica is. Who is Jessica?
Josie
“Responsible news outlets should press House Republicans to justify their refusal to vote for aid for Ukraine and habit of spreading Russian conspiracy theories…”
I hope she will encourage her own “responsible news outlet” to press Republicans to answer such questions. It might even cause me to resubscribe if they did. Ha! Who am I kidding?
Old School
@SiubhanDuinne: Looks like Jessica Tarlov is a “The Five” co-host on Fox News.
Can’t say I watch.
rikyrah
Dim or Disloyal?
Once again, why do they get the benefit of the doubt after all their actions.
They are traitors against the United States. Period.
SiubhanDuinne
@Old School:
Thank you. I am not familiar with her, nor with “The Five.” At least it isn’t someone I feel ignorant or stupid for not having ever heard of!
ETA: Oops, I suppose I could have read the chyron, but I managed to ignore it entirely!!
Josie
@SiubhanDuinne: It felt a bit strange to hear a Fox co-host say that Jamie Raskin was totally correct about something. It makes you wonder what they are seeing in the polls.
Miss Bianca
Is it just me, or does anyone else think Gym Jordan looks like a kid in the classroom who’s just been told to “hold it till the bell rings” rather than being given a bathroom pass?
ETA: Yeah, I know it’s petty compared to the other issues involved here, but the thought of that asshole being given gastrointestinal distress as a result of his conduct during this whole debacle does rather warm the cockles of my liver. ‘Tis the least that he deserves.
rikyrah
@Villago Delenda Est:
That would be too much like right.
Spanky
@Josie: I do believe I caught the chyron early on calling her a “Democrat Strategist”.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Josie: Rupert Murdoch is no longer a Trump fan. It may be that he’s willing to let a little of the truth leak into the Fox News bubble if it hurts Trump. Its a delicate dance. They need to allow just enough truth to dampen Trump enthusiasm, but not enough that they lose their audience to Newsmax and similar alternatives.
Spanky
@Miss Bianca: No, he looks like a kid with very limited intelligence who just cut a massive fart in Comer’s direction and I hope to God this is the case.
Tony Jay
Once again, with feeling.
They’re not dim. They’re not easy marks. They’re not overly credulous or naively trusting. They’re not fair-weather allies or blackmailed assets or even blinkered adherents to an own the Libs/both sidesing credo that got a bit out of control.
They’re operatives in a global campaign to destroy participatory democracy and turn everyone who isn’t richer than Croesus into an interchangeable part.
The fact some of them are also dumb as all fuckery is just a case of man meets moment.
SiubhanDuinne
@Josie:
Well, I looked her up in Wikipedia and it says of her “The Five” gig on Fox that “she serves as a rotating liberal co-host alongside Harold Ford, Jr.” FWIW. The idea of HF the Younger being a liberal voice is laughable on its face.
Josie
@SiubhanDuinne:
So true.
SFBayAreaGal
@Tony Jay: This 100%.
Ken
It does look like half of a Democratic campaign ad, doesn’t it? “Here is the star witness of the Republican impeachment hearings, with his lawyers.” Then some nice contrasting photo — maybe Hunter Biden leaving Congress?
Josie
@Tony Jay:
But they aren’t all that rich, so what do they get out of it? Won’t their faces eventually get eaten?
TBone
@Tony Jay: well said.
TBone
@Josie: those are the ones in a death cult and they get to feel “justified.’ The leopard is on its way.
Chris
@Tony Jay:
What’s drives me insane is that every bit of this happens right in the open. Trump went on national television in front of millions of Americans back in 2016 to ask Russia to interfere in his opponent’s campaign for him. When he did that, his approval rating among Republicans didn’t go down, Putin’s just went up. His followers print and wear shirts that say “better Russian than Democrat!” in the finest tradition of the French right wing circa 1938.
None of this is hidden or ambiguous in any way. This isn’t some underground crime syndicate whose true nature and leadership detectives and reporters can only guess at. They have been very candidly proclaiming for eight years that they welcome and solicit the Russian government’s help in remaking their country in its image. People who pretend that there’s still any doubt here aren’t doing it because it’s true, they’re doing it, at best, because admitting the truth would mean admitting that the world is a very different place than what they’ve been telling us it is for all their lives.
Tony Jay
@Josie:
Being on the ‘winning side. Promotions they haven’t earned. Hookers and blow. The thrill of being part of something dirty and wrong. Stone racism.
Pick your poison. I bet the street toughs and cafe intellectuals who jumped on the various fascist trains back in the 20s and 30s had their reasons too, but at the end of the day they were just as guilty of stanning for totalitarianism as any 21st century newsroom hack or MAGA goon.
billcinsd
@Tony Jay: Some of them are pretty dim. I* knew John Thune in High School and he was very stupid 40+ years ago
Splitting Image
Back in the 1950s, Walt Kelly wrote a series of strips in Pogo where Pup-Dog goes missing and the swamp folks put Albert the Alligator on trial for his murder. The prosecutor, Honest Sam, enters the presumed skeleton as evidence but it turns out to be the skeleton of a fish. Sam argues that Pup-Dog was fond of water, so the skeleton could be him. (Churchy la Femme proceeds to eat the evidence on the witness stand.)
Eventually the dog is found in perfect health inside a cabinet in Albert’s house, where he had managed to get stuck. The prosecutor then argues that Pup-Dog being in his house proves that Albert could have eaten him, so the jury should find him guilty anyway.
Yesterday’s satire is today’s headline.
BeautifulPlumage
CNN reports on Chesebro :secret: twitter account. Hoo boy!
Chris
@billcinsd:
That did also occur to me when I was reading. Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, none of these people were ever exactly rocket scientists, but there’s still a pretty major deterioration from the one to the next. Makes you kind of scared to imagine what they follow Trump with.
I assumed the point was “their dimness is not the explanatory factor for any of this.”
UncleEbeneezer
@Josie: They want the US to be like Russia: A dictator-led oligarchy with strict punishment of Women, LGBTQ People, protestors, no civil rights protections etc., and a State Church that is happy to sign off on all of it.
Tony Jay
@Chris:
It’s totally out in the open. All of it. From the politicians saying the quiet parts out loud to the pundits pretending the emperor’s bare arse is a Gucci suit. Its all performative faff that only the ‘savvy’ are interested in giving style marks to.
They’re lying to us as they strip the world we live in of civilised rules. They’re the enemy and I’m bored with pretending there’s anything more complicated to it than that.
blindyone
@SiubhanDuinne: Right? “Our candidate” Harold who attempted to pander to voters in his state by posing in front of a Confederate flag. No surprise he’s got a little paycheck from Fox now representing “our side” of politics.
piratedan
@Tony Jay: agree, just go with the easiest answer, yes, they are not incredibly smart and yes, they are irretrievably broken as people.
Lets take Gym Jordan as an example, here’s a guy who was a College Wrestling coach for a good university who had a great college career. We all like our heroes and Gym is a natural for someone who exemplified the Peter Principle (pun intended). Sure, he may not be a pedophile, but he sure has no issue with allowing pedophiles and such activity to take place on his watch. Truly speaks to his character, so he’s a natural for the GOP and the tough guys set the rules and so he wants to be a tough guy. For all we know, he was abused as an athlete and considers himself “okay”, so there we go…
He’s no intellectual giant and most of what we see from him is a schtick and reinforcement of his “image”. He acts as a bully because he thinks that bullies are “powerful”.
I’m sure that he’s simply one story in a GOP full of stories, but the end result is the same, they all engage in this sociopathic casual cruelty that their power gives them.
Tony Jay
@billcinsd:
That was back in the era when they put lead in cigarettes, right?
UncleEbeneezer
@BeautifulPlumage: Maybe a BJ lawyer can chime in but, I assume this means that the cooperation and proffer interviews Cheesebro has gotten from states will not prevent him from being charged by Jack Smith once he starts indicting the co-conspirators in the Jan 6 case.
trollhattan
@BeautifulPlumage: BadgerPundit makes me think Betty’s dog took control of her iphone.
Betty
@SiubhanDuinne: Jessica is the one trying constantly to report facts to the Fox audience. I am surprised she is still there.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@trollhattan: If Betty’s dog became a pundit, it would probably be more interesting that the crap we get from the political press.
Tony Jay
@piratedan:
Yup. Occam’s Razor is a multi-purpose tool.
Frex, over in the UK right now the Tories are engulfed in an Islamophobia scandal because parts of the Media have decided to pretend that they’ve only just noticed how soaked in anti-Muslim vitriol the Conservative Party and its Base are. And we’re all just supposed to play along, like lots and lots of people – including the Muslim Tory peer they’re now front paging – haven’t been saying it for years.
Meanwhile the rabid vandals of the Campaign Against Antisemitism have decided to accuse Charlotte Church (remember her? Voice of an Angel? Sang opera at the Clinton White House aged 10 or something?) of being an antisemite because she had the temerity to sing a song that included the line “Free from the river to the sea” at an event raising money and awareness for the genocide in Gaza.
Charlotte fucking Church. The nicest Welsh woman on Earth. Number 7 on many peoples list of ‘Top Ten Celebs You’d Love To Get Drunk With’. But the Media want everyone to pretend that there’s a genuine question over whether she’s actually a vile Jew-hater and that the CAA isn’t just a Lobby group that exists to claim absolutely everything and everyone that steps outside the pro-Israeli narrative is antisemitic, even though that’s exactly what it is and what it does, and the Media are completely aware of that.
Fuckem. I’m not playing along. No one should.
BeautifulPlumage
@UncleEbeneezer: per the article this could nullify the proffers from the states. Michigan is the main focus of the article.
UncleEbeneezer
@BeautifulPlumage: Sure, but my point is that I believe those proffers never shielded him from Federal Indictment, and this development gives DOJ even more ammo for those charges.
JML
@Tony Jay: yeah…Charlotte Church may be lovely and probably has no idea that phrase has been used by Hamas for a very long time to mean genocide. but it doesn’t mean that she should get a total pass. well-meaning pro-peace and pro-Palestinian folks should maybe know enough about what they’re saying to not use phrases associated with a terrorist group intended to mean genocide against the jewish people when trying to support peace and opposing genocide?
Bill Arnold
@Chris:
As Paul Campos says today at LGM, ” ‘Kidding on the square’ — to be joking but at the same time really mean it — is a central aspect of fascist aesthetics.”
(wictionary has a 1907 usage reference, “kiddin’ on the square”)
Tony Jay
@JML:
Except it’s not. I couldn’t give a flying fuck how the scumbags of Hamas use it, and I’m constitutionally unwilling to give the creeps running CAA licence to define what is and is not acceptable phrasing when they’ve proven themselves to be completely cynical in their misuse of that power when the British Establishment handed it to them in order to keep the Left from winning elections.
People with actual skin in the game and long histories of being on the right side of major moral questions say it’s about everyone between the river and the sea being free to live their lives. I believe them. People with long histories of being apologists for apartheid, conquest and oppression say otherwise. I don’t believe them.
Not remotely interested in playing the Right’s cynical censorship game on this or any other issue.
rikyrah
@Tony Jay:
PREACH!!!!!
Bill Arnold
@BeautifulPlumage:
When f’in CNN can doxx a person, that person’s OPSEC sucked.
Anonymous accounts require effort and care to keep them anonymous. This suggests that he probably made similar errors in other venues when he was plotting insurrection.
Bill Arnold
@JML:
Mmmm. How about “The Nile to the Euphrates”?
Can we call such people religious supremacists?
Chief Oshkosh
@Wapiti: And at what point do we clean house at FBI?? Yes, I get that they warned Comey and Co. that a 1023 has unvetted information, but how fucking long were they listening to just this one guy? And how many others are on the FBI informant payroll?
Why has there never been a Democratic FBI Director?
Chief Oshkosh
@rikyrah: Yep. Nobody forced the GOP asshats to visit Moscow on July 4th, those many moons ago, to sit and sup with Putin.
Hell, every one of the shitbirds should be sitting in a cell chain to a chair until the explain every action and motivation leading up to, during, and after that junket.
Warblewarble
If you come for Charlotte Church ,you better not miss. That shot was a mile wide.
Chief Oshkosh
@Bill Arnold: Josh Marshall’s TPM did the footwork; CNN just cadged off of it.
Chris
@Chief Oshkosh:
The FBI is basically the macro version of the problem every blue state government has with the police, namely that it’s a total right-wing militia, but one that’s popular enough with the public that touching it is radioactive and a fight that liberal governments are afraid they can’t win.
Personally I want them the fuck gone on purely practical grounds – between the decades of Hoover telling everyone that there’s no such thing as the American Mafia, whatever the fuck that was with Whitey Bulger up in Boston, and the last decade or so of them being gofers for the Russian mob, they’ve basically been a shield for organized crime for their entire life. But I seriously doubt if I could get anything like a majority behind me on that one.
RevRick
@SiubhanDuinne:
@Josie: She’s Fox News’s house liberal. She’s there to add “balance” after their $686 million smackdown. She makes sure that the truth has a passing acquaintance with Fox News.
Bill Arnold
@Chief Oshkosh:
Oh, OK. Still, K. Chesebro made mistakes that even a proper rookie wouldn’t make.
schrodingers_cat
The Atlantic is at it again. The prestige media has begun its fluffing of the putative R nominee. Apparently the word used to describe him was and I quote “unbeatable”.
gene108
Gotta agree with Comer and Jordan pushing on. The lack of evidence only proves the conspiracy goes far wider and is more insidious than we can possibly imagine.
Big Fly
@Tony Jay:
Put perfectly, and with feeling. Thanks for reading my mind so well.
akita
The headline should have been an eight year old kid saying:
Repub Venality Open Thread: “Dim,or Disloyal?” ¿Por qué no los dos?” After all, tomorrow is taco Tuesday!