Bill Barr has 'questions to answer' after GOP witness linked to Russian spies: reporter
The unmasking of the Republicans' star witness as a potential conduit for Russian disinformation raises questions for the FBI and William Barr's Justice Department.
House impeachment witness Alexander Smirnov was arrested for lying to FBI agents and then admitted to working with officials associated with Russian intelligence, and NBC News reporter Ken Dilanian said federal investigators should explain why they relied on him as a confidential informant for a decade.
"It's not just congressional Republicans that have some questions to answer here, it's the FBI and the Justice Department," Dilanian said. "Although they concluded that there was no evidence to support the bribery allegation [against President Joe Biden], they also said that this confidential human source was a trusted informant. They relied on him for more than 10 years. Only now are they saying, 'Oh, he's a liar, we're indicting him for lying.' They need to explain that. Who was duped within the FBI here by someone who may have been a plant by Russian intelligence? That's very important, because that information infected our political system."
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Smirnov originally made the bribery allegation against Biden after then-attorney general Barr established a process for reviewing information coming from potentially dubious sources turned up by Rudy Giuliani's fishing expedition in Ukraine, and Dilanian wondered how his claims weren't weeded out.
"Leaving aside the question of whether this informant was a Russian intelligence plant, it was clear that his information wasn't true," Dilanian said. "The FBI and the Justice Department under Bill Barr investigated it out of the Western District of Pennsylvania and was unable to corroborate that bribery allegation or any allegations of corruption against Joe Biden. It was pretty clear that this Republican effort was a cynical effort from the beginning. To hear [Rep.] Ken Buck say that [they were warned about Smirnov] underscores what a lot of people already believe. What's really at issue here is when did the FBI, when did the Justice Department, when did Congress start to understand that this informant not only was maybe unreliable but was actually, you know, a fabulist, made up all kinds of things, and was also talking to Russian intelligence? That's a big deal, a momentous development."
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