Alexander Smirnov revealed his FBI role as he chased financial deals that caused him legal trouble, at one point listing what appeared to be a traffic median as his home address.
Former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, left, walks out of his lawyer's office in downtown Las Vegas in February. Smirnov is accused of lying to authorities about a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving President Biden and his family. When a Los Angeles internet entrepreneur decided that his company should lend money to Alexander Smirnov, an Israeli American businessman fluent in four languages, he did so in part because Smirnov boasted of a highly respectable background.
Smirnov’s revelations should have caused the FBI to drop him as a source or at least “read him the riot act” and become highly suspicious of him, said Jerry Hester, a former FBI agent who worked organized-crime cases involving informants. The indictment was brought in federal court in Los Angeles by special counsel David C. Weiss, who has also lodged tax and gun charges against the president’s son. In asking a federal judge to keep Smirnov behind bars until trial, prosecutors argued that the onetime informant, including to Russian intelligence agencies. They portrayed him as part of an ongoing foreign plot to interfere with U.S. democracy by spreading disinformation about the Bidens.
Lavrenyuk’s adult son, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and employee of the U.S. Labor Department, attested in a letter to the judge: “Alex always keeps his word. Family is everything for Alex, and he would not disappoint them by fleeing.” He didn’t respond to requests for comment. Smirnov was initially served a copy of the suit outside of a Los Angeles Rite Aid pharmacy, according to court papers. But when the plaintiffs sought to locate him again, he eluded their grasp, they explained in filings. One address Smirnov provided did not exist. Another was inside a gated community where the leasing office reported that Smirnov had moved out long ago.
Joseph Benincasa, an attorney who represented the plaintiffs, said he didn’t think there was a connection between the two cases. But the fact that the people suing Smirnov were also government targets suggested to Hester, the former FBI agent, that Smirnov may have assisted the government in its case.
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When did Republicans know the truth about Alexander Smirnov?Frank Figliuzzi is an MSNBC columnist and a national security contributor for NBC News and MSNBC. He was the assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, where he served 25 years as a special agent and directed all espionage investigations across the government. He is the author of 'The FBI Way: Inside the Bureau's Code of Excellence.
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