House Republicans on Friday demanded information from the FBI about one of its ex-informants, Alexander Smirnov, who was indicted last month on false-statement charges for alleging that the president and his son accepted bribes in their foreign business dealings.
Smirnov’s allegations against President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden played a key role in the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into the president until the Justice Department charged Smirnov, whose name was previously unknown, with making false statements to federal authorities.
In a five-page letter to FBI director Christopher Wray, House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) and House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) asked how Smirnov came to be outed, despite the FBI’s previously regarding him as a “highly credible” confidential human source (CHS) for 14 years.
“Only after Mr. Smirnov reported that President Joe Biden accepted a bribe from a Ukrainian energy company [Burisma] in exchange for using his official position to oust the Ukrainian Prosecutor General did the FBI apparently take a hard look at this CHS,” the Republican lawmakers wrote. “The Judiciary Committee has been examining the FBI’s CHS program in the wake of recent high-profile blunders, but this new information raises even greater concerns about abuse and mismanagement in the FBI’s CHS program.”
Smirnov’s claims about the Biden family’s financial ties to Burisma were included in an official FBI form, known as an FD-1023. While the document dates back to June 30, 2020, before Biden assumed office, it was publicly released only last summer after a bitter battle between congressional Republicans and the FBI.
“At each step in the investigation, the FBI represented to the Committees that the CHS was highly credible and that disclosure of information about the CHS could jeopardize national security,” the letter reads. “The FBI initially fought tooth-and-nail with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Senator Chuck Grassley to produce the FD-1023, at one point even declining to acknowledge that the document existed.”
Comer and Jordan said this is “another example of how the FBI is motivated by politics.”
“Since last year, Congress has relied on the FBI’s word that this CHS was highly credible, while not ever receiving his name or the full, unredacted FD-1023 form,” they wrote. “The FBI’s noncooperation prevented the Committees from ever knowing Mr. Smirnov’s identity, speaking with him directly or indirectly, or independently assessing the credibility of the information he provided.”
In their request, the GOP chairmen asked the FBI to hand over information on criminal cases that relied on information provided by Smirnov, documentation on how much he was paid for his services, details on how he was validated as a CHS, and records related to the FBI’s internal investigation of Smirnov.
The FBI has a deadline of March 15 to comply with the request.
A federal judge in California ruled earlier this week that Smirnov should remain in jail while awaiting trial. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.
On February 14, a federal grand jury indicted Smirnov for allegedly giving the FBI false statements that Joe and Hunter Biden received $10 million in bribes from Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma. Smirnov was a longtime FBI informant who was permitted to carry out illegal activities for investigative purposes multiple times, according to his two-count indictment filed by special counsel David Weiss.