LOS ANGELES (CN) — The FBI informant charged with lying about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter receiving bribes from a Ukrainian energy company was arrested again Thursday after a magistrate judge two days ago had let him out of jail on his own recognizance.
Alexander Smirnov, 43, was taken in custody while he was meeting with his attorneys in Las Vegas pursuant to an arrest warrant issued earlier Thursday by a federal judge in Los Angeles, according to an emergency request by his lawyers to have an immediate detention hearing and to have him released.
"Mr. Smirnov respectfully requests that this honorable court set his second initial appearance 'without unnecessary delay' which, under these bizarre circumstances, mean: forthwith, and order his release," Smirnov's attorney David Chesnoff said in the motion. "Alternatively, Mr. Smirnov requests an emergency hearing before the chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada."
Smirnov was first arrested last week in Las Vegas, where he lives, on charges he lied to the FBI about meetings and calls he had with executives at Burisma Holdings — a Ukrainian conglomerate where Hunter Biden served on the board of directors —and about $5 million bribes the company paid to both Joe and Hunter Biden during the Barack Obama administration.
Special Counsel David Weiss, who's leading the Justice Department investigation of the younger Biden, filed the charges in Los Angeles federal court, where Smirnov previously resided. Since Smirnov was arrested in Nevada, his detention hearing was held in Las Vegas rather than in LA.
But the U.S. magistrate judge in Las Vegas on Tuesday disagreed with Weiss' prosecutors that Smirnov, who has both U.S. and Israeli citizenship, should remain in jail while awaiting trial. This prompted the Justice Department lawyers to ask U.S. District Judge Otis Wright III in Los Angeles, to whom the case was assigned, to review the magistrate judge's decision and order Smirnov back to jail.
In their request to have Smirnov re-arrested, the special counsel's lawyers cited his extensive and recent contacts with Russian intelligence officials, and accused Smirnov of lying as recently as December 2023 about Hunter Biden's purported visits to a hotel in Kiev. This, the government, was evidence that Smirnov was again trying to plant misinformation to influence the U.S. presidential elections just as he had four years ago.
According to the prosecution, Smirnov didn't disclose to pretrial services after he was arrested that he had access to about $6 million in liquid funds, or that he had connections to foreign, and in particular Russian, intelligence services that made it likely that he could flee the country and hide out abroad.
"I think the best thing we have going for us is the idea that people think we have that long arm, and having been in government for 17 years, I'm routinely astonished at how short it is," Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise said at Tuesday's detention hearing in response to the judge's inquiries whether the U.S. couldn't track down Smirnov if he fled overseas.
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