Gyges (USIC) Re-Spreads His Cloak in DC

Former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, left, walks out of his lawyer’s office in downtown Las Vegas after being released from federal custody Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2024. Prosecutors say that Smirnov, who is charged with making up a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company, had contacts with Russian intelligence-affiliated officials. (K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)

WT Editorial Board, "DOJ indicts FBI informant to protect Biden"

Lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation is a crime — but only if the fib interferes with the Democratic Party’s agenda. Consider the case of Alexander Smirnov, a paid FBI informant who was indicted last week.

Federal prosecutors say Mr. Smirnov was “actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections” and promoting “a new false narrative” about President Biden and his son Hunter. If that’s a crime, why was Christopher Steele not arrested for peddling a dossier filled with nothing but fabrications — paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign — with the intention of hobbling then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016?

Mr. Steele peddled his bundle of deceit to every government official and reporter willing to take his call, doing incalculable damage. Mr. Smirnov, by contrast, spoke only to his FBI handler, which had no impact because the feds have never done anything about Biden family corruption.

By now, the Department of Justice’s game has become familiar. This new indictment was dropped with the intention of generating headlines like NBC’s “Former FBI informant received false information about Bidens from Russian intel officials.” Because so many voters on the left don’t read past the headlines, this tidies up Mr. Biden’s reputation as November approaches.

The same trick was used in the last election campaign, when 50 former intelligence officials — including five CIA directors — asserted that Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of Russian disinformation.” This was a lie.

That lie was also designed to safeguard Mr. Biden’s electoral prospects. Those paying attention can draw a valuable lesson from incidents such as these. When intelligence community officials cry “Russia,” there’s a fair chance it’s politically motivated deception.

In his indictment, special counsel David Weiss says Mr. Smirnov’s May 19, 2020, text messages are evidence of the informant’s bias. “It’s all over the news in Russia and Ukraine as well as live calls between [Mr. Biden] and [Ukrainian then-President Petro Poroshenko],” Mr. Smirnov texted. “Smells bad for [Mr. Biden].” Another text said, “Dems tried to impeach [Trump] for same. Even less.”

These messages were referring to the press conference in which Andrii Derkach, then a member of Ukraine’s Parliament, released a recording of the phone call in which Mr. Poroshenko told then-Vice President Joe Biden that he agreed to fire the prosecutor who was investigating the energy company Burisma “despite of the fact that we didn’t have any corruption charges” against him.

Mr. Derkach provided the Big Guy’s motive in forcing Mr. Poroshenko’s hand in the form of documents showing Burisma was paying Mr. Biden’s ne’er-do-well son $1 million a year. A few months later, the Treasury Department sanctioned Mr. Derkach for “cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives” — even though his material was genuine.

This pattern of silencing whistleblowers is plain to see. Mr. Smirnov, an Israeli and U.S. citizen who lives in Los Angeles, could very well be a knave. Most paid FBI snitches are unsavory characters. Absent evidence to the contrary, however, it appears equally likely that DOJ is amplifying minor misrecollections to burn a source the FBI itself cultivated and compensated.

It’s a bit too convenient that the government’s supposedly impartial lawmen are willing to enforce the law only against Mr. Biden’s opponents. Voters interested in restoring balance to the scales of justice have a chance to do so in November.

And the Biden Crime Family cover-ups continue... will they ever get to the bottom of it?  Are they really even trying, or is it simply another "show for the public" like the John Durham "investigation" was?