Prosecutor told inquiry he'd fact-checked claims of GOP's now arrested star witness
When speaking before the Judiciary Committee investigating President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, former United States Attorney Scott W. Brady promised he'd fact-checked the claims of the GOP's star witness — a man arrested last week and accused of lying to the FBI.
Tuesday's Politico Playbook claimed that the allegations by FBI informant Alexander Smirnov were never confirmed — but, as national security expert Marcy Wheeler pointed out, Brady said the opposite under oath.
When Brady testified to the Committee on the Judiciary on Oct. 23, 2023, he was asked straight out whether he'd fact-checked the information given by Smirnov, and he said he did. When asked if he confirmed whether Smirnov actually traveled to the countries he claimed he had, however, Brady wouldn't answer.
"Can you tell us about the process that your office went through to vet the information that is now contained in" the informant's statement (called an FD-1023 form)," the investigators asked.
"So, we attempted to use open-source material to check against what was stated in the 1023. We also interfaced with the [confidential human source's] CHS' handler about certain statements relating to travel and meetings to see if they were consistent with his or her understanding," testified Brady.
Brady was then asked what he was able to determine.
"What we were able to identify was that it was consistent. And so we felt that there were sufficient indicia of credibility in this 1023 to pass it on to an office that had predicated grand jury investigation," Brady said.
He was then asked directly if they were able to confirm that Smirnov traveled to Ukraine and any other countries he claimed in the information given to the FBI.
Wheeler pointed out the curious answer from Brady: "I would decline to answer that."
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Brady went on to say that this fact checking was at the end of June 2020, before the information was passed to the District of Delaware. The U.S. attorney then was David Weiss, who eventually became the special counsel for the Hunter Biden case.
"Mr. Weiss and I had spoken on a number of occasions," Brady explained. "But concerning this particular assignment by [Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey] Rosen relating to Ukraine, we had several conversations and interactions, both between David [Weiss] and me and then between our respective teams that were running our — vetting on our side, investigation on their side relating to the sharing of information from, you know, January, let's say, 10th through mid to late October when we provided the final briefing to the District of Delaware."
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