Sifting the FBI’s Garbage
Alexander Smirnov’s indictment tells us nothing good about the bureau.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
Feb. 22, 2024 6:12 pm ET
There’s a lesson for informants (and politicians) everywhere in the Alexander Smirnov story:
If you are going to lie to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, make sure it’s a lie the FBI wants to hear.
That’s not the story the media is telling about the arrest of Mr. Smirnov, the FBI “confidential human source” indicted last week for allegedly fabricating claims that Joe and Hunter Biden received bribes from a Ukrainian energy firm. The press instead is using the revelation to slather egg all over the faces of congressional Republicans who highlighted those claims as part of their investigation of the Biden family business.
The better question: Does the FBI apply anything beyond politics to its disaster of a confidential source program?
It’s not as if Mr. Smirnov is alone. The FBI enabled the “dossier” hoax by swallowing a compilation of fabulist claims presented to it by
“confidential human source” Christopher Steele. It was aware Mr. Steele was working for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, had evidence he was blabbing to the press, and had been presented with a pile of tabloid-like accusations, yet
chose to forgo any vetting and instead present him to a court as a credible source. Mr. Steele’s nonsense—coming at a time FBI leadership fretted over a Donald Trump presidency—was nonsense the FBI wanted to hear.
Special counsel John Durham later filed charges against
Igor Danchenko, one of Mr. Steele’s subsources, presenting powerful evidence that he
lied to the FBI in 2017 interviews by fabricating sources and information. Yet a jury acquitted Mr. Danchenko after FBI agents testified that while they couldn’t verify his claims, never made him take a polygraph test, and feared he was lying, they nonetheless trusted him. Mr. Danchenko’s credibility—coming at a time when the FBI’s reputation risked further collapse—was a credibility the FBI found useful to back.
Mr. Smirnov seems unlikely to be as lucky. According to the indictment, in 2020 he told the FBI that Burisma executives had told him in 2015 and 2016 that they hired Hunter to “protect us, through his dad” and had paid Hunter and Joe $5 million apiece for that aid. When Republicans in 2023 heard about the FBI write-up of these claims, they demanded the bureau hand it over. The FBI initially balked, arguing their source was too valuable to risk exposing.
House Oversight Committee Republicans say the
FBI told Congress their source had worked for the bureau since 2010, had been paid roughly $200,000 for information, and was deemed “highly credible.” Ranking Oversight Democrat
Jamie Raskin acknowledged the FBI’s briefing about credibility. Republicans say Director
Christopher Wray also confirmed the FBI used Mr. Smirnov’s information in investigations until June 2023 (when the bribery claims went public).
The FBI affirmed Mr. Smirnov’s credibility so long as it was useful to do so.
It isn’t useful any longer. Republicans for months have hounded special counsel David Weiss, who is handling the Hunter Biden probe, to explain what he’s done since 2020 to verify or refute the Smirnov claims. Last week’s indictment, which he sought, is his answer.
The FBI’s “highly credible” source is now presented as a brazen liar, a boaster, a profiteer who played a double game with the bureau, and a partisan who had it in for Joe Biden.
If this is true,
it ought to be a massive story that the FBI for 13 years relied on a man who prosecutors now worry has troubling and “extensive” ties to Russian intelligence. Instead, the media in its desire to embarrass Republicans is working to absolve the FBI, with the New York Times explaining the bureau never did “think much” of the Smirnov claims and concluded in 2020 that they “did not merit continued investigation.”
That’s it? The FBI is presented with an explosive bribery claim about a former vice president from a “credible source” who says it came directly from participants, dismisses said claim, and does nothing to re-evaluate its relationship with that source? (Mr. Smirnov hasn’t entered a plea, and his lawyers say he intends to “fight the power of the government.”)
This incompetence is having real-world consequences. The country is still living with the fallout from the Russia-collusion hoax, while Hunter’s lawyers have already filed court papers claiming Mr. Smirnov’s “rabbit hole of lies” “infected” the case against their client. Shall we add up the taxpayer cost of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Mr. Durham’s clean-up of it, the Justice Department’s manpower on the Smirnov case, and congressional and inspector-general investigations? That’s aside from the serious question of whether
FBI sources are rightly beginning to worry that their worth depends solely on how politically useful the FBI views them on any given day.
The GOP’s Biden probe doesn’t sink or swim on the bribery claims, though given recent history Republicans would have been wise to treat the dramatic Smirnov accusations more carefully. Garbage in is garbage out. But
it’s the FBI that ought to have to explain the steaming pile of trash.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/sifting...ureau-b4302f22
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