The FBI informant accused by special counsel David Weiss of fabricating a $10 million bribery allegation against President Biden and first son Hunter was rearrested Thursday under what his lawyers called “bizarre circumstances” two days after his release from jail.
Alexander Smirnov, 43, was taken into custody at the downtown Las Vegas law offices of his attorneys, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, as he consulted with them on his case, court documents show.
US Magistrate Judge Daniel Albregts had granted Smirnov’s motion for pretrial release on Tuesday under various conditions, denying a Justice Department effort to keep the dual US-Israeli citizen in custody.
The government filed a motion to reopen Smirnov’s detention hearing in the Central District of California, where a federal grand jury indicted him on charges of making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record earlier this month.
“Despite Judge Albregts’s prior ruling, denial of the stay request, and Mr. Smirnov’s prior release from custody, on the morning of February 22, 2024, Mr. Smirnov was arrested for a second time – on the same charges and based on the same indictment … while at the undersigned counsel’s law office for meetings with counsel,” his lawyers wrote in an motion for an emergency detention hearing in the US District Court for the District of Nevada.
“It should further be noted that the fact that [Smirnov] was attending a legal consultation meeting at his attorneys’ office contradicts the notion that he is a risk of flight,” they added.
Chesnoff and Schonfeld argued that the re-arrest conflicts with their client’s Sixth Amendment rights.
“There are no provisions for the re-arrest of Mr. Smirnov in this District after being Ordered released,” the attorneys wrote, noting that the new arrest warrant came out of the Central District of California.
Smirnov’s motion demands that the Nevada court hold his “second initial appearance” and that he be released “without unnecessary delay,” citing the “bizarre circumstances” of his re-arrest.
Alternatively, his lawyers asked for an “emergency hearing” before the Nevada court’s chief judge and that the US Marshal Service keep Smirinov in Nevada until after another detention hearing.
Smirnov was initially arrested on Feb. 14 after flying into Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas from overseas.
The two felony charges against him are related to the alleged false statements documented by the FBI in a June 2020 FD-1023 form that House Republicans last year battled for access to read.
Weiss alleges that the corruption accusations against the Bidens are false due to the fact that Smirnov wasn’t working with Ukrainian energy giant Burisma at the time he claimed to have had conversations with a key company figure that told him about the bribes.
The indictment also accuses Smirnov of holding a bias against the 81-year-old president, and federal prosecutors argued on Tuesday that the former FBI informant is “actively peddling new lies that could impact US elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.”