Trump DoJ Reopens Guilty Plea of Hunter Biden Perjurer Because Reasons
Filed under: COUNTERINTELLIGENCE
Federal prosecutors have allowed Alexander Smirnov, the man who pleaded guilty to lying to federal prosecutors about Hunter Biden and Burisma, to leave prison and see his eye doctor in California while they review his case, for some reason.
The government did not explain itself in the court filing two weeks ago. Prosecutor David Friedman wants to review a guilty plea from a man who objectively was not even working at Burisma during the time he claimed to access insider knowledge.
Nor was the conviction of Smirnov a result of action or influence from the Joe Biden White House. On the contrary, federal prosecutor David Weiss was pursuing his investigation against Hunter Biden when he decided that Smirnov should be prosecuted for lying to the FBI about the presidential son.
If any political actors deserve blame for that, it is the Republicans in the House of Representatives who pursued the impeachment of Joe Biden on bogus charges of a $10 million Burisma bribe.
Their pressure on the FBI to disclose the original FD-1023 reporting form, which they then waved before cameras, directly resulted in the conviction of Alexander Smirnov. Unwritten reasons for “reviewing” his guilty plea thus include scrubbing messy political details from the permanent record.
“The United States intends to review the government’s theory of the case underlying Defendant’s criminal conviction,” reads the filing. I will be fascinated to find out how they explain their eventual decision that Smirnov was somehow not committing a crime when he objectively lied to the FBI.
One one level, this is politics. On another level, this is personal payback. Donald Trump has also pardoned Devon Archer, the former business associate of Hunter who was himself convicted of fraud in 2018 and testified against the presidential son in Congress five years later. Expect Archer and Smirnov to receive full pardons, one day.
The Trump administration is “degrading U.S. cybersecurity as unprecedented threats keep rising,” counterintelligence veteran John Schindler writes at The Observer. Recent purges of top staff at the professional intellgence agencies have “no parallel in our Intelligence Community’s history,” Schindler says.
The loss of key personnel at CYBERCOM is inexplicable, with the crisis at least partially created by Laura Loomer’s dramatic ‘influencer’ performance as a political kommissar. Schindler is especially concerned by plans to cut staff at CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Team Trump seems to possess animus towards cybersecurity, and some of it appears personal. This week, the White House announced an executive order that targets Chris Krebs, who was the founding CISA director during Trump’s first term. This is a plain vendetta, with the president publicly terming Krebs a “traitor” while stripping him of his security clearances and opening an investigation into Krebs’ conduct as CISA boss. Krebs was appointed by Trump himself, yet his unpardonable sin was his refusal to endorse Team Trump’s discredited claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” by Democrats.
Vengeance is one part of this. Another part is about bringing the ‘deep state’ to heel. Trump is driving his enemies out of the federal intelligence and law enforcement bureaucracy and inspiring fear in the remaining workforce.
More than political purges, they are a personal campaign against his enemies, real or perceived, punishing the professionals who reported the wrong truths, like Jonathan Buma. Another, simultaneous part of Trump’s program involves rehabilitating people like Devon Archer and Alexander Smirnov. “Who controls the past now controls the future, who controls the present now controls the past.”
Biden-Era FBI Whistleblower Jonathan Buma Arrested By Trump FBI
Jonathan Buma, the FBI agent who alleged that Rudy Giuliani is compromised by Russian intelligence and the Bureau was covering it up, was arrested by the FBI last week as he prepared to leave the country. He was charged with disclosure of classified information under 18 U.S. Code § 1905.