Feds detail Russian contacts of indicted FBI informant to get him back in jail

LOS ANGELES (CN) — The Justice Department disclosed details of the purported contacts of a recently indicted FBI informant with Russian intelligence officials, including their efforts to spread more misinformation about Hunter Biden in an attempt to influence the upcoming presidential election.

Alexander Smirnov told his FBI handler as recently as December that he had met with a Russian official who told him the Russians ran an intelligence operation in a hotel in Kiev where they intercepted cell phone conversations by prominent U.S. guests for possible use as “kompromat” in the 2024 election.

He also told the FBI last year that they should look into whether Hunter Biden, identified only as “Businessperson 1” in court filings, had been recorded in the Kiev hotel because, he claimed, President Joe Biden’s son had been to the hotel many times and he had seen video footage of the younger Biden entering the hotel.

This, according to the government, was false information because Hunter Biden has never been to Ukraine. He served on the board of Ukrainian energy conglomerate Burisma Holdings, which Smirnov has falsely claimed paid $5 million bribes to both Joe and Hunter Biden while Joe Biden was still vice president, but the board meetings he attended didn’t take place in the Ukraine.

“Smirnov’s efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States continues,” government attorneys for Special Counsel David Weiss said in court filings Wednesday. “What this shows is that the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020. He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.”

The Justice Department supplied the details of Smirnov’s extensive Russian contacts in a bid to have a federal judge in Los Angeles order him back to jail on charges he lied to his FBI handler in 2020 about Burisma bribing Joe and Hunter Biden. Smirnov was arrested in Las Vegas, where he lives, last week, but a U.S. magistrate judge on Tuesday let him out of jail on his own recognizance.

The government claims Smirnov is a flight risk because, aside from his extensive contacts with foreign intelligence services, he has hardly any ties with Las Vegas, and as an Israeli citizen, it is easy for him to get a new Israeli passport. He also failed to disclose his access to about $6 million in funds, which would enable to live comfortably abroad, according to the government.

“Pretrial supervision is, at its core, based on trust,” the government said. “The circumstances of the offenses charged—that Smirnov lied to his FBI handler after a 10-year relationship where the two spoke nearly every day—means that Smirnov cannot be trusted to provide truthful information to Pretrial Services.”

Smirnov’s contacts with Russian intelligence officials are extensive and recent, according to the prosecutors, who included a list of purported meetings he had with unidentified officials in various countries, including at birthday parties on “mega yachts” where Russian oligarchs mingled with government officials.

One of Smirnov’s contacts, identified as “Russian Official 1” was variously referred to as “the son of a former high-ranking Russian government official,” as having “direct access to the highest levels of the Russian government” and as having “knowledge and seeming control of two groups of Russian operatives who were previously tasked with the assassination of a high-ranking official of COUNTRY C,” presumably a reference to Ukraine.

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