U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley did his best last year to promote what he called “very significant allegations from a trusted FBI informant implicating then-Vice President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme.”

On February 15, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging that informant, Alexander Smirnov, with two felonies: making a false statement to a government agent, and creating a false and fictitious record. Last July, Grassley released that document (an FBI FD-1023 form) to bolster claims President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, had accepted bribes worth $5 million. Federal prosecutors determined the events Smirnov first reported to his handler in June 2020 “were fabrications.”

At this writing, Grassley’s office has not sent out a news release about the criminal charges returned by a federal grand jury in California. But in a statement provided to Bleeding Heartland, staff claimed the indictment “confirms several points Senator Grassley has made repeatedly.”

The spin was not convincing.

SMIRNOV’S CLAIMS “WERE FALSE, AS HE KNEW”

According to the charging document, Smirnov had been a “confidential human source” for the FBI since 2010 and in that role was “authorized to engage in illegal activity for investigative purposes.” However, he was repeatedly told “he must provide truthful information to the FBI and that he must not fabricate evidence.”

Smirnov had told his handler in 2017 about a conversation with the owner of the Ukrainian company Burisma. Among other things, he mentioned that Hunter Biden served on the company’s board.

The handler reached out to Smirnov about this statement again in June 2020, “at the request of the FBI’s Pittsburgh Field Office.” As Philip Bump reported for the Washington Post, “[Rudy] Giuliani’s slapdash efforts to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine had led then-Attorney General William P. Barr to set up a process for assessing such allegations based out of the FBI field office in Pittsburgh.”

At that point, Smirnov reported new claims, which turned out to be “false derogatory information” about the Bidens. Supposedly, Burisma officials had told him in 2015 or 2016 that they had orchestrated $5 million bribes to Joe Biden and Hunter Biden during the Obama administration, when the vice president would have been able to influence U.S. policy toward Ukraine. FBI staff memorialized those assertions in an FD-1023 form.

The FBI then asked Smirnov for travel records, in order to verify his account. By August 2020—while Donald Trump was still president—the FBI’s Pittsburgh office had determined the investigation “should be closed.” The FBI’s Deputy director and the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General “concurred that it should be closed.”

The indictment explains how conversations Smirnov recounted were “fabrications,” which “were false, as he knew.” The government found that Smirnov “met with officials from Burisma for the first time in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration,” and did not travel to Vienna around the time he claimed to have met with a Burisma official while Biden was still vice president.

Smirnov, it alleges, “transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against Public Official 1, the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against Public Official 1 and his candidacy.” He repeated some of the false claims and changed some aspects of his story when FBI agents interviewed him again in September 2023.

GRASSLEY CLAIMS CREDIT FOR INVESTIGATION

Grassley amplified the bribery allegations in numerous press releases and media appearances last year. He drew criticism for releasing the FD-1023 form based on Smirnov’s 2020 statements.

So I sought comment from Grassley’s office on February 15: does the senator still believe Smirnov’s claims about bribery involving the Biden family? And does he regret releasing the FD-1023 form relating to those allegations?

Communications staff emailed a short while later,

Today’s indictment confirms several points Senator Grassley has made repeatedly. The informant behind the FD-1023 was, indeed, a long-serving, trusted FBI source used by the agency for criminal investigations since the Obama administration. In fact, he was so trusted that the FBI provided him authorization “to engage in illegal activity for investigative purposes.”

But, when presented with information from a source the agency so trusted, the FBI – as exposed by Senator Grassley – sat on the document for years, without performing due diligence. It’s clear that only after Senator Grassley made the FD-1023 public did the FBI investigate the allegations in the document. 

Not really. The indictment makes clear that “After the Defendant made these reports [in June 2020], the FBI asked him for travel records, which he provided, in an attempt to determine whether the information he provided was accurate.”

Those records didn’t support the bribery allegations. Nor did the statement Smirnov provided to his handler in 2017 about his first conversation with a Burisma official.

It’s true that FBI staff did more work on this front after Grassley released the document, interviewing Smirnov again in September 2023. But that doesn’t support the idea that the agency “sat on the document for years, without performing due diligence.” Why would Bill Barr’s DOJ sit on explosive allegations against Joe Biden, who in the summer of 2020 was the presumptive Democratic nominee against Trump?

The statement Grassley’s office provided on February 15 continued:

Since October 2022, Senator Grassley has had a single aim: to ensure the DOJ and FBI investigated the FD-1023. Today’s indictment makes clear that, without Senator Grassley’s oversight and exposure of the FD-1023, the agency would have continued neglecting its duties and failing to provide the transparency the American people deserve. Congress shouldn’t have to threaten contempt to obtain an unclassified document.

After withholding information from Congress and the American people, and hiding behind the guise of protecting “sources and methods,” the Department of Justice has now exposed their own source. Accordingly, this indictment isn’t enough – the public has a right to see all the underlying evidence supporting the Biden Justice Department’s case. The Biden administration must show its work.

It’s disingenuous to say Grassley’s “single aim” was to ensure Smirnov’s claims were investigated. In reality, his longstanding goal has been to depict Biden as corrupt. That’s why he spread unproven bribery claims to the widest possible audience through conservative and mainstream media outlets.

Even now, the senator does not acknowledge the bribery allegations were false. On the contrary, his office implies the Justice Department is still hiding evidence about the Smirnov affair.

“OVERSIGHT AMATEUR HOUR”

Kris Kolesnik, who served as director of investigations in Grassley’s office for nineteen years, has criticized his former boss for “waging political battles” and “wading in the bogs with provocateurs and witnesses who so far seem to be credibility-challenged.” After Grassley released the FD-1023 form last July, Kolesnik told one reporter, “I would never have advised him to do that.”

Asked about the criminal charges against Smirnov, Kolesnik told Bleeding Heartland via email, “What a surprise. Another Republican oversight bombshell dud. First it was Gal Luft, now Alexander Smirnov.”

Luft was at the center of different corruption allegations against the Bidens, related to a Chinese energy company. Some Congressional Republicans hyped Luft’s claims, and he suggested the Biden administration was persecuting him. But he was indicted in 2022 for allegedly violating sanctions against Iran, trafficking weapons, and aiding the Chinese government without registering as a foreign agent.

Kolesnik also said House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, and Grassley “have weaponized duds against FBI ‘bias’ and Biden ‘family corruption.’ It’s oversight amateur hour. How much egg on their faces is enough?”

We’ll get our first clue when the House of Representatives decides whether to proceed with impeaching Biden. The bribery tale Smirnov fabricated in 2020 was one of the pretexts for launching a formal impeachment inquiry last September.

Top image: Senator Chuck Grassley reads from prepared remarks on the Senate floor about the FD-1023 form he had made public. Screenshot from a video posted to the senator’s YouTube channel on July 25, 2023.