excalibur
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- Mar 19, 2015
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Oh, it is very peculiar. Normally, if the FBI feels a human resource is no longer reliable, they just drop him and blackball him. They ever reveal their name, as they promised they would never reveal a source's name.
But here?
www.nationalreview.com
But here?
The move to prove bribery allegations false marks Weiss’s most aggressive investigative action — though none of the most critical evidence of Biden's influence-peddling comes from this source.
The indictment that Biden Justice Department “special counsel” David Weiss brought against informant Alexander Smirnov — previously described by the FBI as “highly credible” and a useful source for several successful prosecutions over the last decade — is one of the more peculiar charging documents I’ve ever seen. (It can be downloaded at DOJ’s website, here.) Smirnov is charged with two counts of making false statements to the bureau — in essence, falsely claiming that he’d been told that President Biden and his son Hunter were bribed by a corrupt Ukrainian energy company. (emphasis added)
There will be more to say. For now, I raise three points.
Making a Case by Encouraging a Previously Reliable Informant to Incriminate Himself
I don’t recall ever seeing a false-statements case such as this: Government investigators summoned an informant with a long history of fruitful cooperation to a meeting at which the investigators expected to elicit false statements from the informant, yet did not confront him with their belief that he was lying, nor give him an informed opportunity to explain the discrepancies between what he had said and what they believed to be true.
Generally speaking — and especially when dealing with an informant who has a track record of providing solid information — a competent investigator who catches the informant spouting false claims wants to understand if there is any innocent explanation for the inconsistencies. If there is not, the investigator wants to understand why the witness is lying. Yet, there is no indication in Weiss’s indictment of Smirnov that this happened. There is certainly no indication that Weiss’s team, before encouraging Smirnov to incriminate himself, advised him that they suspected he was lying.
That’s very odd. It doesn’t, of course, mean that Smirnov was telling the truth — far from it. But it does suggest that what Weiss was principally interested in is cinching a prosecutable case against the informant rather than understanding the underlying facts.
In an ordinary case, the Justice Department and FBI do not want to convey the message “Cooperate with us, at high risk to yourself and your family, and we will eventually, and without warning, use what you’ve told us to make a case against you.” In fact, when FBI Director Chris Wray was resisting the GOP-controlled House demands that he provide them access to the 1023 form (the report of Smirnov’s interview), one of Wray’s main points was that publicizing the report would make it harder for the FBI to recruit informants.
Apparently, Weiss and the Justice Department do not share that concern. I assume, though, that they remain concerned about the government’s obligation to disclose to defendants any information indicating that they may have been prosecuted under false premises. Presumably, House Republicans will demand both a list of the criminal cases in which Smirnov’s information was used and, from the Justice Department, any disclosure letters that prosecutors have given to the defendants in those cases relating that a key government informant has been charged with fabricating evidence and providing false statements to government agents.
Gratuitous Disclosures about Russian Espionage
Another peculiarity: the disclosures about alleged Russian espionage.
Generally speaking, and especially in such highly sensitive (usually highly classified) areas as espionage, the government does not disclose information unless it is absolutely necessary to establish probable cause for the offenses charged. And in an indictment, the disclosure of information is even less revelatory than what would be set forth in a complaint. (A complaint is a sworn statement, usually from a government agent, that lays out enough information to enable the court to find probable cause and issue an arrest warrant; an indictment, by contrast, is a formal statement of charges by a grand jury — it is not necessary to lay out the probable cause in an indictment because the court assumes it based on the grand jury’s vote to indict.)
Here, however, Weiss’s indictment painstakingly describes Smirnov’s claim that Russian officials informed him that Moscow had extensively bugged the Premier Palace Hotel in Kyiv (Weiss spells it “Kiev”) and that Hunter Biden had gone to that hotel many times. Smirnov added that he had seen video of a person he believed to be Hunter entering that hotel and urged investigators to check Hunter’s telephone usage at the hotel, since his calls may well have been recorded by Russian intelligence.
This is apropos of nothing in the charges.
The indictment avers that Hunter Biden has never been to Ukraine (not surprising given that his Burisma board seat was a sinecure — a pretext for buying the American vice president’s influence by paying millions to his son). But for present purposes, that is neither here nor there; the point is that neither of the two counts in the indictment charges Smirnov with lying about what Russian officials told him.
To the contrary, Weiss would have you to believe that, of all the claims made by Smirnov, this part and this part alone is true: Russian officials were feeding him information In fact, in a motion filed on Wednesday to try to convince a judge that Smirnov should be detained pre-trial, Weiss aggressively argues that Smirnov’s connections to Russian intelligence make him a flight risk; and in support of this contention — quite remarkably to anyone who knows how national-security cases work — Weiss recites in lavish detail Smirnov’s long history of meetings with Russian operatives on which he has extensively reported to the FBI (see here, pp. 10–19). The prosecutor concludes by warning the court that Smirnov is engaged in “efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States” — i.e., President Biden.
There is no good law-enforcement reason for these disclosures. They are extraneous to the false-statements charges. And from an intelligence perspective, the disclosures are exactly the kind of information that the FBI’s counterintelligence agents and the intelligence community habitually fight tooth and nail to prevent the Justice Department from disclosing in court submissions that are or may become public. Even if such information seems benign (and this information seems anything but), our intelligence agents do not want foreign intelligence agents — especially Russia’s — to have insight into what we know and how we know it.
While it makes no law-enforcement or intelligence sense for Weiss to have revealed this information, his doing so makes perfect sense if you believe, as I have contended, that Weiss’s main job all along has been to protect President Biden. (emphasis added)
...
There will be more to say. For now, I raise three points.
Making a Case by Encouraging a Previously Reliable Informant to Incriminate Himself
I don’t recall ever seeing a false-statements case such as this: Government investigators summoned an informant with a long history of fruitful cooperation to a meeting at which the investigators expected to elicit false statements from the informant, yet did not confront him with their belief that he was lying, nor give him an informed opportunity to explain the discrepancies between what he had said and what they believed to be true.
Generally speaking — and especially when dealing with an informant who has a track record of providing solid information — a competent investigator who catches the informant spouting false claims wants to understand if there is any innocent explanation for the inconsistencies. If there is not, the investigator wants to understand why the witness is lying. Yet, there is no indication in Weiss’s indictment of Smirnov that this happened. There is certainly no indication that Weiss’s team, before encouraging Smirnov to incriminate himself, advised him that they suspected he was lying.
That’s very odd. It doesn’t, of course, mean that Smirnov was telling the truth — far from it. But it does suggest that what Weiss was principally interested in is cinching a prosecutable case against the informant rather than understanding the underlying facts.
In an ordinary case, the Justice Department and FBI do not want to convey the message “Cooperate with us, at high risk to yourself and your family, and we will eventually, and without warning, use what you’ve told us to make a case against you.” In fact, when FBI Director Chris Wray was resisting the GOP-controlled House demands that he provide them access to the 1023 form (the report of Smirnov’s interview), one of Wray’s main points was that publicizing the report would make it harder for the FBI to recruit informants.
Apparently, Weiss and the Justice Department do not share that concern. I assume, though, that they remain concerned about the government’s obligation to disclose to defendants any information indicating that they may have been prosecuted under false premises. Presumably, House Republicans will demand both a list of the criminal cases in which Smirnov’s information was used and, from the Justice Department, any disclosure letters that prosecutors have given to the defendants in those cases relating that a key government informant has been charged with fabricating evidence and providing false statements to government agents.
Gratuitous Disclosures about Russian Espionage
Another peculiarity: the disclosures about alleged Russian espionage.
Generally speaking, and especially in such highly sensitive (usually highly classified) areas as espionage, the government does not disclose information unless it is absolutely necessary to establish probable cause for the offenses charged. And in an indictment, the disclosure of information is even less revelatory than what would be set forth in a complaint. (A complaint is a sworn statement, usually from a government agent, that lays out enough information to enable the court to find probable cause and issue an arrest warrant; an indictment, by contrast, is a formal statement of charges by a grand jury — it is not necessary to lay out the probable cause in an indictment because the court assumes it based on the grand jury’s vote to indict.)
Here, however, Weiss’s indictment painstakingly describes Smirnov’s claim that Russian officials informed him that Moscow had extensively bugged the Premier Palace Hotel in Kyiv (Weiss spells it “Kiev”) and that Hunter Biden had gone to that hotel many times. Smirnov added that he had seen video of a person he believed to be Hunter entering that hotel and urged investigators to check Hunter’s telephone usage at the hotel, since his calls may well have been recorded by Russian intelligence.
This is apropos of nothing in the charges.
The indictment avers that Hunter Biden has never been to Ukraine (not surprising given that his Burisma board seat was a sinecure — a pretext for buying the American vice president’s influence by paying millions to his son). But for present purposes, that is neither here nor there; the point is that neither of the two counts in the indictment charges Smirnov with lying about what Russian officials told him.
To the contrary, Weiss would have you to believe that, of all the claims made by Smirnov, this part and this part alone is true: Russian officials were feeding him information In fact, in a motion filed on Wednesday to try to convince a judge that Smirnov should be detained pre-trial, Weiss aggressively argues that Smirnov’s connections to Russian intelligence make him a flight risk; and in support of this contention — quite remarkably to anyone who knows how national-security cases work — Weiss recites in lavish detail Smirnov’s long history of meetings with Russian operatives on which he has extensively reported to the FBI (see here, pp. 10–19). The prosecutor concludes by warning the court that Smirnov is engaged in “efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States” — i.e., President Biden.
There is no good law-enforcement reason for these disclosures. They are extraneous to the false-statements charges. And from an intelligence perspective, the disclosures are exactly the kind of information that the FBI’s counterintelligence agents and the intelligence community habitually fight tooth and nail to prevent the Justice Department from disclosing in court submissions that are or may become public. Even if such information seems benign (and this information seems anything but), our intelligence agents do not want foreign intelligence agents — especially Russia’s — to have insight into what we know and how we know it.
While it makes no law-enforcement or intelligence sense for Weiss to have revealed this information, his doing so makes perfect sense if you believe, as I have contended, that Weiss’s main job all along has been to protect President Biden. (emphasis added)
...
David Weiss’s Very Peculiar Smirnov Indictment in the Biden Case | National Review
The move to prove bribery allegations false marks Weiss’s most aggressive investigative action. This is politics, not law enforcement.
www.nationalreview.com
