Alexander Smearnov: The Democratic Gift That Keeps on Giving

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

If House Republicans deliberately tried to find a worse chief witness for their Joe and Hunter Biden Salem Witch Hunt, they couldn't have possibly found one worse than Alexander Smirnov. In all honesty, if James Comer and Jim Jordan went out of their way to tank their own investigation into the president and his son Hunter, then Smirnov was the guy they would have picked to do it.

     Smirnov is such a shady character that if you were to do a Google image search on him, virtually all you'd get are pictures of the retired Russian figure skater of the same name. Only a serious refining of your search parameters would turn up even a handful of pictures of the actual Russian FBI informant after leaving a courthouse in Las Vegas yesterday after he was, incredibly, released from custody.

     And yet, not only this guy shadier than the margins of a Lautrec painting, but the FBI paid this guy undisclosed sums of money to be an informant for them without even vetting him or his claims. And then, just yesterday it was revealed that Smirnov had or has ties to Russian intelligence and got his Hunter Biden "dirt" from them.

    This was after telling his handler at the FBI that for four years, 2015-2019, he got it from Burisma executives.

   This whole Smirnov/Giuliani/Kostiantyn Kulyk/Andrii Derkach/GOP hit job on the Bidens is starting to look like a large jigsaw puzzle. A big section is put together, then another big section & pretty soon it's inevitable that the whole puzzle will be put together so we can see this for the conspiracy it is. So, yes, Smirnov was recently exposed as the George Santos of Russia.

     He lied about President Biden and Hunter getting $5,000,000 bribes apiece, he lied about Burisma hiring Hunter to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems” and he lied about the 17 recorded phone calls, text messages and two financial documents. He lied about everything.

    But you know who was telling the truth? Burisma's CEO, when he testified before Comer's committee. He categorically denied having any contact with Joe Biden or there being any payout. Lev Parnass, who was squarely in the middle of this character assassination plot, recently said on Twitter that he'll never forget the day he showed Giuliani the transcripts of the testimony. "(H)e turned red with anger and screamed 'bury it, get rid (of it)'”.

     Something you'd perfectly expect an ethical former federal prosecutor to say when confronted with incontrovertible evidence that queers the narrative.

    And, speaking of Smirnov and Giuliani, according to Parnass (who's teasing an upcoming book launch), the connection is there.

     And, it appears as if the FBI knew Smirnov was a liar at least as far back as 2019, which makes their own mendacity an even more bitter pill to swallow. Predictably, Republicans who were until very recently hip-deep in this shit show are now trying to crawl away from it all since Smirnov was arrested in Las Vegas and even madly deleting any references to it (Except for Chuck Grassley, another co-conspirator, whose Smirnov lies are still on his official Senate page).

 

     And now, it seems as if all Putin's stooges in the FSB had to do was stovepipe these lies straight to Republican congressional leadership and could assume they'd be swallowed hook, line and sinker. Which, of course, they were.

    

     But, regardless of all the Republican defections, there will always be the True Believers.