The Daily Fuckup

Alexander Smirnov’s February 14 arrest and indictment did the real damage to the Biden bribery claim that Republican investigators had leaned on. The Justice Department said Smirnov, an FBI confidential human source, was charged with making false statements and creating a false record after allegedly telling the bureau that Burisma executives paid Joe Biden and Hunter Biden $5 million each. He was arrested the same day at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas after returning to the United States from overseas.

That matters because the case went directly to the source of the allegation. Prosecutors said Smirnov fabricated the bribery story and repeated it in later FBI interviews. Once that indictment was unsealed, the underlying claim was no longer being carried by a witness the government could treat as credible. It was being carried by a defendant accused of lying to federal agents.

A February 20 detention filing added another layer of fallout. In that filing, prosecutors said Smirnov had admitted that people associated with Russian intelligence helped pass along a story about the Bidens. That did not create the collapse of the bribery allegation; it followed the collapse that had already begun with the February 14 indictment and arrest.

Republicans had used Smirnov-related allegations prominently in their Biden inquiry, but the timeline is blunt. The key break came on February 14, when the government charged the informant at the center of the story. February 20 brought more damaging detail, not the first sign that the claim had failed.