Former FBI Agent Sounds The Alarm After Arrest Of Biden Bribery Informant: ‘It’s Shameful’
Former FBI agent Stuart Kaplan told Fox News host Jesse Watters that the FBI informant who has been charged with lying to FBI agents about an alleged bribery scheme involving Joe Biden was highly credible.
The informant, identified as 41-year-old Alexander Smirnov, is accused of lying to FBI agents when he told them that executives associated with Burisma paid $5 million each between 2015 and 2016. Smirnov, 43, was charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record.
He was arrested in Las Vegas on Wednesday shortly after arriving from an overseas trip and is expected to make an initial court appearance this week.
Kaplan described the arrest as “shameful” and firmly rejected the idea that it exonerates President Biden and his son, Hunter. “It’s shameful, it’s embarrassing, and it’s not a time at all for the Bidens to take a victory lap,” he said, adding that he and his colleagues suspected the charges would eventually come.
“Jesse, when that 1023 form was released last year, my colleagues and I knew at that point that informant was going to be sacrificed. It was just a matter of time,” he said.
“So what the FBI and our government wants to have us believe now is we’ve now taken out the predicate, the predicator, the person who started the ball rolling you know, tattling or telling on the Bidens, and now we gathered all of this other information, all of the money trail, all of the checks, all of the payments, but yet because we’re going to discredit the guy who unleashed on him, let’s throw it all in the garbage like it never even happened,” the former FBI agent continued, rejecting the notion that the arrest exonerates Biden.
“We still have a treasure trove of evidence that leads directly from Hunter Biden to his father,” Kaplan said. “It’s just insane. It’s illogical. It really is embarrassing. I can’t believe that the FBI has gone down this road again to unleash on this informant.”
Kaplan noted that Smirnov was on the FBI’s payroll since 2010. “You do not stay on the books with the FBI unless you have been vetted and you are credible. And the fact that he had received so much money from the FBI — so many people have to sign off on that payment or those payments, it has to be verified that he is a very productive informant,” he said.
Prosecutors have charged that Smirnov had only spoken with Burisma executives in 2017, when Joe Biden was no longer serving as vice president. “In other words, when [Joe Biden] had no ability to influence US policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office,” the indictment stated.
The indictment was filed by Special Counsel David Weiss, who was appointed to look into Hunter Biden’s legal woes by Attorney General Merrick Garland last year. Weiss has separately charged Hunter Biden with a number of gun and tax-related offenses.
