Is Comer’s probe somehow part of Smirnov’s mission? Were the dopes duped?
The Alexander Smirnov story just won’t go away. Sure, the unraveling of the House subcommittee dedicated to impeaching Joe Biden by indicting his son is noteworthy as Republicans run for cover. And they should, but the question is why. What is it that they have unearthed and unleashed on us?
What seems like a plot with predictable complexity done to a recurring (for Republicans) theme is just too pat. A Russian-Israeli double (triple?) agent sent to upend our election cycle- again- would make a poor movie script as that Smirnov fellow is a poor man’s doppelganger to the previously indicted whistleblower whose stench still lingers within the House conference room.
When Special Counsel David Weiss arrested the FBI informant on February 16 what seemed obvious suddenly wasn’t. Who was he working for, the Russians? Israelis? Biden? (No, really). Was his rearrest real or planned? Were the Feds and his handlers afraid that he was headed for an open-window heart attack or was his revelation a double-secret probation event planned and executed by our enemies trusting in the ineptitude of James Comer and Jim Jordan, the GOP duo who revived a Wayne’s World like vibe with their public access-like hearing.
In an LA Times article entitled “The Informant Next Door,” Matt Hamilton probes the strange man who has set off a bomb within the GOP’s plot to smear Biden using shady snitches as sources:
Smirnov grew up in Ukraine and holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and in Israel, where his parents and sister live. He called Israel home until 2006 and has lived in America for about 18 years, according to Chesnoff. His covert work may have started as early as 2002, when he claimed to be involved in recruiting Russian and foreign consular officials, apparently as sources, according to what he told his FBI handler years later.
There is a “nothing is as it appears” feel to Smirnov’s story. The 2002 “recruitment” of a Russian agent which involved Smirnov as a double agent working for Israeli intelligence provided him a backstory and cred that caught U.S. intelligence’s interest. If the flipping of a Russian agent was theater, as some are suggesting, then Smirnov was being groomed and planted within Western intelligence circles as a sleeper agent for Russian intelligence all along waiting for an opportunity.
While it is hard to believe that the Russians could have foreseen Trump’s political ascent and the fumbling incompetence of the Republican Party, we can be certain of their patience and persistence in planting a sleeper agent within our intelligence network. It is also fair to question what other plots Mr. Smirnov has been party to over the years while acting as an American asset. The LA Times article claims that while Smirnov has lived in LA for nearly 16 years with questionable means of support, he has a bank account of more than six million dollars and has hired a high-powered attorney with ties to the Israeli IDF.
The implication that Smirnov was setting up Israeli intelligence by flipping a cut-out Russian agent in 2002 suggests that he has always been working for Putin’s Russia and his placement as a U.S. intelligence asset was central to a Russian plan to weaken the U.S. and its Western allies through disinformation campaigns now seems rather obvious. The Democratic Party’s so-called “obsession” with Russian interference appears well-founded and Smirnov’s role is only a small part in a much larger plot that includes Ukraine and Putin’s designs on NATO. One of the revelations in the DOJ’s Memorandum in Support of Detention, filed February 20, included information passed on to his handlers before the start of the Russian invasion that attempted to minimize Putin’s war intentions in keeping with the Russian dictator’s use of euphemism while misinforming Western intelligence :
…Third call with RUSSIAN OFFICIAL 2 (High-ranking member of a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service): After SMIRNOV returned from his overseas trip, he again asked RUSSIAN OFFICIAL 5 to set up another call with RUSSIAN OFFICIAL 2. During the call, SMIRNOV discussed the additional escalation of Russian troops along the Ukraine border and asked RUSSIAN OFFICIAL 2 whether he could provide any details about Russia’s intentions. RUSSIAN OFFICIAL 2 stated he was 99% that only a skirmish would occur.
- UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF NEVADA memorandum, p.22
In a similar discussion with his handler, Smirnov passed along information relating to impending events (an assassination attempt of a foreign leader, likely Zelenskyy, e.g.) that were both believable and difficult to disprove:
In October, Smirnov said he had conversations with a senior Russian official who discussed his “seeming control” of two teams of Russian operatives tasked with assassinating an unidentified leader of another country. He later recounted attending a meeting where “a high-ranking member of a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service” was among those discussing possible resolutions to the war in Ukraine.
Despite his best efforts at impressing his FBI handler with the level of detail and his “insider” connections, Smirnov slipped up in his conflation of events that would have placed Hunter Biden in a Russian “wired” hotel room in Kyiv that he suggested Hunter had visited many times. He claimed using his Russian sources that phone calls existed that would prove his assertion that the Biden’s had taken bribes. This info would later be used by Republicans like Chuck Grassley and Jim Comer to scaffold the false testimony by Tony Bobulinski, the infamous “Big Guy” phone call, that could never have taken place:
Indictment at ¶51. Specifically, Smirnov wanted them to look into whether Businessperson 1 (Hunter Biden) was recorded in a hotel in Kiev called the Premier Palace. Id. Smirnov told investigators that the entire Premier Palace Hotel is “wired” and under the control of the Russians. Id. Smirnov claimed that Businessperson 1 went to the hotel many times and that he had seen video footage of Businessperson 1 entering the Premier Palace Hotel. Id. Investigators know that Smirnov’s new story is false because Businessperson 1 has never travelled to Ukraine. Id. at ¶ 54. (emphasis my own)
- UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF NEVADA memorandum, p.23
One could conclude that the Russians may have believed that this rather easily disproved info was beyond the ability of Comer’s investigators to unearth- or, that for the Russians it didn’t matter. Injecting doubt in the system of government works at any level to further their goals. Comer’s investigation had already been compromised. The Smirnov revelations smeared the GOP fabulists like Jordan, Comer, and Grassley and placed the FBI and U.S. intelligence in an awkward position of indicting their longtime informant. The question could be raised whether Smirnov’s unmasking was in itself part of the plan. The odd circumstances surrounding his initial release on bail and later rearrest and confinement is a mystery in itself. If Smirnov had confessed his role in the Biden bribery affair exposing his Russian handlers, wouldn’t Smirnov and his legal team have wanted him placed in confinement for his own safety? Where was he going when he was apprehended at the Vegas airport? Why had the FBI who had warned Republicans at a hearing demanding the release of the FD 1023 document alleging the Biden bribery claims that were at the heart of Comer’s subcommittee investigation of Hunter Biden and his father:
Last July, Grassley released a lightly redacted document — an FD-1023 form — detailing unfounded allegations of the Biden family’s corruption and bribery. The form featured conversations Smirnov had with the FBI, in which he relayed that the head of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma told him he paid both President Biden and his son Hunter Biden $5 million each.
In his floor speech Tuesday, Grassley said the FBI “finally acted” because of the document’s release.
Grassley who was duped into forcing the issue, was now trying to claim responsibility for Smirnov’s indictment. FBI Director Wray had resisted releasing an unredacted version of the 1023 at the time because the allegations made were themselves suspect. Grassley in suggesting that his demands have moved the FBI to “finally act” was simply making an omelet from the egg he was wiping from his face.
Here’s another possibility. Maybe the Comer probe is part of a Russian disinformation campaign to interfere in the 2024 elections. Perhaps the GOPers were being played by smarter guys from Russia who decided to burn an agent who had completed his assignment. And maybe, just maybe, the probe into “the Bidens” was simply a ruse to entangle Comer and friends in a honey trap of their own making.
It may be impertinent to ask, but… can there be a mole on the Hill? In the oft-quoted words of Sir Walter Scott, a storyteller himself by trade,
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”
Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com.
