Charges to key source muddy GOP’s inquiry
Republican investigators dismiss allegations against FBI informant Smirnov
Alexander Smirnov was cast by Republicans as one of the FBI’s most trusted informants, offering a “highly credible” account of brazen public corruption by Joe Biden that formed a pillar of the House impeachment investigation of the Democratic president.
Then, last month, the script changed dramatically.
Smirnov, 43, finds himself charged with lying to the FBI, accused of fabricating a tale of bribery and espionage involving then-Vice President Biden and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and he has told officials he has Russian intelligence contacts.
It’s muddied the GOP inquiry plenty. Interviews and a review of public records by The Associated Press suggest this was not likely Smirnov’s first turn in what the government says is a cycle as a fabulist.
They offer a portrait of a businessman who operated a string of murky shell companies, ran with others who have been accused of fraud, and boasted of his own ties to the FBI. The episode highlights not only the perils of the Republicans’ reliance on unverified information in their quest to confront Biden but also the risks inherent in the FBI’s use of sometimes-unreliable informants who may have ulterior motives.
“How come in all of the universe nobody in America figured out for years that this guy is a fraud and a liar? How did this [expletive] make its way to Congress?” said Yossi Attia, a Los Angeles businessman who ran a penny stock company in which Smirnov held a substantial stake.
Republicans leading the impeachment inquiry have dismissed the fabrication allegations against Smirnov as irrelevant to their investigation and are raising doubts about the FBI’s credibility. The FBI, for its part, has never publicly called the informant’s information verified or complete.
“The trust level that I have with the FBI is zero,” Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said in a Fox News interview last week.
Smirnov’s lawyers did not address questions about their client’s past business dealings.
A murky past
Little is known publicly about Smirnov other than allegations in the government’s case, court records, corporate financial disclosures and business filings.
A dual Israeli and U.S. citizen, Smirnov moved to the United States in 2006, traveling in Los Angeles’ Eastern European expatriate circles for more than a decade while providing information to the FBI. It wasn’t immediately clear what investigations Smirnov may have contributed to, though he worked with an FBI handler based in Seattle and the indictment suggests he provided reporting related to “ROC” — a likely reference to Russian organized crime.
A short biography included in a corporate financial document from 2011 describes Smirnov as a veteran businessman “fluent in Russian, English, Hebrew and Arabic” who once was president of a “private mineral and logistic operation, with assets in Russia.”
Even as Smirnov was being paid as a government informant, he participated in duplicitous business schemes, according to court records and interviews.
One example is his investment in an obscure penny-stock company called EcoTrade Corp. Such companies can yield a handsome return on a minimal investment. They are lightly regulated and often subject to financial scams and market manipulation.
In 2010, Smirnov purchased a stake in Eco-Trade valued at roughly $3 million as the company was on the verge of launching an advertising blitz that dramatically inflated its value. A crash three years later saddled investors with losses. It’s unclear from SEC filings how much Smirnov may have made. He has not been not accused by authorities of wrongdoing in connection with that company.
Court documents filed in Smirnov’s current criminal case read like a spy novel, portraying him as a jet-setting global traveler who took meetings with mysterious foreign figures and stashed $6 million across numerous accounts.
After former President Donald Trump and his allies, including Rudy Giuliani, acting as a Trump lawyer, began to peddle unsupported corruption claims involving deals between Biden and his son, Hunter, and Ukraine before the 2020 presidential election, Smirnov’s story grew more elaborate.
‘I’ll try to prove it for you bro’
“It’s all over the news in Russia and Ukraine” Smirnov texted his handler in May 2020. In another text at the time, he said, “I’ll try to prove it for you bro.”
He later said a Burisma official told him during the waning days of the Obama administration Joe and Hunter Biden had each accepted $5 million bribes in exchange for a promise to alter U.S. policy in Burisma’s favor. Smirnov claimed recordings existed of a Burisma official being “forced” to pay.
Investigators determined Smirnov had not, in fact, spoken with a Burisma official until after Trump was president and their conversation was about a cryptocurrency venture Smirnov and an associate were promoting.
Congressional Republicans repeatedly promoted the credibility of the information provided by Smirnov, whose identity they say was unknown to them. Even after Smirnov was charged, lawmakers said they were simply relying on what they claim they were told by the FBI. Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, recently asserted FBI Director Christopher Wray had said Smirnov was “one of the most trusted and highest paid” informants in the bureau.
The FBI, however, communicated a different message in correspondence with Congress over the past year, repeatedly cautioning lawmakers information from the source should not be treated as authenticated. In a letter to Comer last spring, the FBI congressional affairs chief wrote, “information from confidential human sources is unverified and, by definition, incomplete.”
That didn’t stop Republicans from running with it in their Biden investigation.