Why Is Trump’s DOJ Still Helping the Russian-Linked Liar Who Smeared Biden?

The government's memorandum in support of the detention of Alexander Smirnov that was filed in early 2024. Jon Elswick/AP On September 17, prosecutors from the Justice Department are scheduled to appear in a federal courtroom in Pasadena, California, for a rather odd event. They will argue that a mysterious former FBI informant with connections to Russian intelligence—who was convicted of lying to the bureau to spread the false accusation that Joe Biden and his son Hunter each received a $5 million bribe from Ukraine—should be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea and get a new trial. That allegation about the Bidens was embraced and weaponized by Donald Trump, right-wing media, and House Republicans, who in 2023 and 2024 cited it as smoking-gun evidence for Biden’s impeachment—until the informant, Alexander Smirnov, a Ukrainian-born Israeli national and businessman who acknowledged he had ties to Russian intelligence, was indicted for lying to the FBI. He pleaded guilty and was subsequently sentenced to six years in prison. (The punishment also covered failing to pay taxes on more than $2 million in income that was not fully explained.) The Trump Justice Department’s effort to assist Smirnov, a longtime confidential source for the bureau, has been puzzling. In March, I broke the news that the DOJ was helping him get out of prison by supporting his appeal, in which Smirnov is trying to throw out his sentence and withdraw his guilty plea. Smirnov’s false report to the FBI fueled the GOP’s absurd effort to impeach Biden and provided ammo for the ludicrous MAGA mantra that Biden was the head of a crime family. The appeal hinges on a technical point: Smirnov, who is represented by an attorney with multiple connections to the Trump administration, claims the federal judge who presided over his trial did not stick to a provision of his plea deal regarding a reduction in his sentence to match his pretrial detention. The judge denies this. What’s highly unusual is that Todd Blanche, then the deputy attorney general, intervened in this case on the side of this Russia-connected fabricator whose lies, according to the federal prosecutors in his case, were concocted to impact the 2020 and 2024 elections—that is, to hurt Biden. Which they did. Smirnov’s false report to the FBI fueled the GOP’s absurd effort to impeach Biden and provided ammo for the ludicrous MAGA mantra that Biden was the head of a crime family. When Smirnov was indicted in early 2024, that impeachment campaign fizzled. The whole Smirnov episode looked like a Russian covert action waged to hurt the Democrats and aid Trump. (For more background on the Smirnov saga, see this previous Our Land issue.) It was not shocking that Moscow would try to insert a phony allegation of Biden bribery into the American political discourse, given that Vladimir Putin had mounted various clandestine operations to help Trump in 2016 and 2020. But most surprising was that there was no public investigation of the Smirnov caper after it turned out this Russian-linked informant had peddled lies to the FBI. Was this truly another Russian assault on American politics? What was the extent of Smirnov’s ties to Russian intelligence? What were his connections to other intelligence services? (Prosecutors feared he might flee to Israel.) Why did his lies to the FBI go undetected for so long? How could he fool his bureau handlers for years? In my forthcoming book How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America, which will be published on September 15, I examined these important and unanswered questions about Smirnov. Here’s a brief excerpt: Though Smirnov’s criminal case would be resolved, left unanswered was a crucial question: Why did he do this? Smirnov tried not once but twice to insert into the FBI disinformation that could possibly influence a US election: first, in 2020, with his claim he had been told about a $10 million Biden bribery scheme, and then in 2023, with an allegation that Hunter Biden had been secretly recorded by the Russians. The FBI didn’t bite either time. But Smirnov managed to provide the Republicans with a fabricated charge they weaponized and used for nine months to threaten impeachment and sully Biden’s image. Had the Russians put him up to this? His false stories aligned with the Biden-­Ukraine corruption narrative pushed by Russian intelligence. Yet there were no investigations of this episode. No inspector general reports on how the FBI had handled him. No congressional inquiry. “It was a matter of great curiosity where Smirnov had come from and who he was reporting to,” Representative Jamie Raskin, the senior Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, later said. Within the Biden White House, officials were frustrated that no deeper digging into the Smirnov case occurred. “It was maddening,” recalled Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser. “Because it was an FBI investigation, we were walled off from it. Biden was absolutely convinced it was a Russian operation.” But neither the president nor the American public ever got the full story. The White House decided not to raise a fuss about a possible Russian active measure undergirding the GOP’s crusade against Biden. His political advisers insisted that it was best not to talk about the Republicans’ impeachment drive. American voters were not taking it seriously. There was no need to direct more attention to this stunt. “The intelligence people were uncomfortable being drawn into this,” Sullivan recounted. “The political people were uncomfortable. It was hard to dial it up to ten.” Biden had repeatedly told his aides he believed much of the right-wing attack on him over Ukraine had come straight from Moscow. But the administration never pressed the Ukrainian government for the intelligence it had on the efforts to malign Biden. “You could have gone to Ukraine’s leadership and intelligence and asked for all the files,” Sullivan said. “Who were the Russians involved? Who put [Russian agent Andriy] Derkach up to it? But no one wanted to touch any of this with a ten-­foot pole.” [Derkach was a Ukrainian legislator who claimed to possess evidence of Biden corruption in Ukraine. He produced no such proof, but he worked with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, to smear Joe Biden.] Such a move could backfire politically if it became public. After all the controversy over Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s investigation of contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia, the last thing the intelligence agencies wanted was to become mired in another to-­do over Russia and Ukraine. Smirnov’s lies were uncovered. The Republicans were shown to be reckless and irresponsible. Still, this operation, with all the markings of a Russian covert action, had achieved a measure of success. For months, Republicans had waved that FD-1023 [the FBI document that contained Smirnov’s phony allegations] and referred to the “Biden bribery scheme” and the “Biden crime family.” Conservative media spread this message to millions of viewers and readers. Impeachment was off the table now. But all the noise about the FD-1023 buttressed the impression that Trump had pushed in 2020 and was reviving for the 2024 campaign: Biden was crooked. Smirnov’s lie—­a Russian operation?—­had been of great value to Trump and the GOP. With its current shenanigans in the Smirnov case, Trump’s Justice Department is helping Smirnov erase his sentence and withdraw his guilty plea. Typically, that would lead to a new trial. But in this instance, if Smirnov wins his appeal, the DOJ might drop the matter and not pursue another trial. Its prosecutors have already suggested in court that the Justice Department is reviewing his case. Should that occur, the Trump administration would allow a possible Russian agent to escape punishment for conning the FBI and attempting to interfere in two US elections. Moreover, such a move would allow Trump acolytes to cite the phony Biden allegations without having to acknowledge they originated with a convicted liar. Is that the goal of Trump’s DOJ—to buttress what might have been a secret Russian operation to tarnish Biden? You can find a full accounting of the bizarre Smirnov case in my soon-to-be-published How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America. 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