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The bribery scandal involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter has become quite a tangled web now that the Justice Department has indicted the individual who accused both men of accepting bribes from a Ukrainian energy company. It is becoming akin to a script in a political thriller, but without the A-list actors.

The new development could either unravel a carefully woven web of deceit or further indicate the weaponization of government.

When the news broke last July that a former FBI informant alleged that then-Vice President Joe Biden and Hunter had received $5 million each to use their positions to pave the way for Burisma to do business in the United States, it sent ripples through the political landscape.

But now, there could be reason to doubt the claims of Alexander Smirnov, the informant who made the accusations.

The indictment further alleges that Smirnov “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.”

In essence, the Justice Department is accusing Smirnov of falsely describing phone calls in which a Burisma executive said he was compelled to pay Joe and Hunter in exchange for favors.

The Defendant also reported two purported phone calls between himself and Burisma Official 1 wherein Burisma Official 1 stated that he had been forced to pay Public Official 1 and Businessperson 1 and that it would take investigators 10 years to find records of illicit payments to Public Official 1.

As alleged herein, the events the Defendant first reported to the Handler in June 2020 were fabrications. In truth and fact, the Defendant had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the thenUkrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016, in other words, when Public Official 1 had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office. In short, the Defendant 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.

 The indictment against Smirnov could cast doubt not only on the bribery allegations against President Biden and Hunter but also against other suspicions of wrongdoing being investigated by House Republicans in their impeachment inquiry – especially given that GOP lawmakers are looking into whether the president was involved in his son’s shady foreign business dealings, a claim he has repeatedly denied.

Democrats could easily use Smirnov’s arrest to push a narrative that the GOP is carrying out a witch hunt against the president and his family. In fact, they are already starting to employ this tactic.

The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, called for an end to the Biden impeachment inquiry.

Raskin said the allegations from the Republicans against Biden “have always been a tissue of lies built on conspiracy theories.” He called on Speaker Mike Johnson, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and House Republicans “to stop promoting this nonsense and end their doomed impeachment inquiry.”

Nevertheless, the House Oversight Committee indicated that it plans to move forward with the inquiry. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, it said that it has “over $30 million reasons to continue this investigation and not one of those reasons relies on the corrupt FBI or an informant,” adding that “Bank records don’t lie.” 

This leads me to my next point.

On the flip side, if the evidence used to support the Smirnov indictment appears to be weak, it could understandably raise questions about the Justice Department’s impartiality. The agency has already been accused of being weaponized against Republicans and conservatives. Indeed, there are plenty of reasons to suspect bias within the DOJ.

The Oversight Committee alluded to this when it referenced the “corrupt FBI,” which has been leveraged against the right quite often over recent years.

Moreover, it is also worth noting that Hunter Biden’s relationship with Burisma is suspicious, to say the least, regardless of the informant. He served as a member of its board of directors despite having no experience in the energy industry. It seems obvious that his connection to power was the impetus behind appointing him to this position. It is not exactly a stretch to suggest that Burisma would have sought to have the Bidens grease the wheels a bit so they could do business in the United States, is it?

This saga still has yet to play out, and there will likely be more revelations that emerge. The question is: Who is the liar here?