The former FBI informant charged with making false statements in relation to the investigation into Hunter Biden's business dealings — and any connection with President Joe Biden — has been ordered to remain behind bars as he awaits trial.
Prosecutors raised concerns that Alexander Smirnov, who the Department of Justice has claimed has ties to Russian intelligence, could flee the country, the Associated Press reported.
“There is nothing garden variety about this case,” U.S. District Judge Otis Wright II said before making his decision. “I have not changed my mind. This man will be remanded pending trial.”
Also read: RNC board member fact-checked on CNN over $1.6M blown on Trump's legal bills
Smirnov was initially released from jail with an ankle monitor, but was ordered back into custody last week after prosecutors raised concerns that he was plotting to flee. He was re-arrested in Las Vegas and appeared in a California courtroom Monday.
As the AP pointed out, Smirnov has been charged with lying to the FBI about executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, saying they had paid the president and his son $5 million each around 2015.
"In urging the judge to keep him in jail, prosecutors revealed Smirnov has reported to the FBI having extensive contact with officials associated with Russian intelligence, and claimed that such officials were involved in passing a story to him about Hunter Biden. Prosecutors said Smirnov had been planning to travel overseas to multiple countries days after his Feb. 14 arrest where he said he was meeting with foreign intelligence contacts," the AP's report stated.
CBS News reported that the judge also said he was "concerned about habit or practice of making false statements."
Smirnov's lawyers said he will appeal against being jailed.
The indictment of the FBI informant Alexander Smirnov has also thrown House Republicans' Biden impeachment investigation into a "quagmire," Philip Bump wrote, in an analysis for The Washington Post — caught between a lack of any evidence to impeach the president, and the demands of Republicans' far-right base to produce the results they want.
Smirnov was the source of a claim that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter accepted bribes from the Ukrainian firm Burisma to steer policy. He is now charged with making false statements, and FBI officials believe he has ties to Russian intelligence.
"The immediate fallout," wrote Bump, was for the leaders of the GOP effort, House chairmen James Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH), "to be the focus of largely deserved disparagement for hyping the allegation in the first place."
But this is just the tip of the iceberg, he added: "When then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced that his conference would launch an impeachment inquiry into Biden, he pointed to the debunked bribery claim as one predicate for doing so. But he also pointed to other things that were similarly dubious and that, in the months since, Comer, Jordan and their committees have been unable to substantiate."
The whole investigation was built on sand from the beginning, Bump argued — and that's a problem because Republicans don't have an easy political exit from it.
