GOP Launched Biden Impeachment Based On Information From Russian Intelligence
I've said it before, I'll say it again, I'll keep saying it until it fucking sinks in, people.
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ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT
This week, we got further confirmation that members of Congress launched impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden based on information fed to them by agents of Russian intelligence. The FBI revealed this in documents related to Alexander Smirnov, an FBI informant who was recently indicted for lying to the FBI about a corruption story involving Joe and Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
After he was arrested, Smirnov revealed that he had met with Russian intelligence officials and fed their lies (that Joe and Hunter Biden were paid millions of dollars by Burisma officials to protect the business from a corruption investigation) to the FBI. That information, in turn, somehow made its way to Congress, where several prominent members of the Republican party touted the information as the smoking gun that would get Biden impeached.
This Is Not A Coincidence. This Is Coordinated.
We have known for years that the Biden-Ukraine-Burisma-Corruption smashup was false. I tweeted this last September. (Click on the tweet to see the full thread.)
As I wrote in this post last October:
[I]t is precisely this false narrative—about Biden corruption in Ukraine—the Republicans are touting today as their reason for launching impeachment proceedings against Biden. To be clear: the Republican narrative being used to argue for Biden’s impeachment comes from Russian intelligence.
Alex, You Must Be A Genius To Have Seen This So Early!
Yes, I am a genius, but not because of this. This Russian intelligence story I know because I pay attention and read. According to a March 2021 Director of National Intelligence report on foreign interference in the 2020 US election:
Moscow used “people linked to Russian intelligence to launder influence narratives-including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden-through US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, some of whom were close to former President Trump and his administration.” Of course they were going to continue with this strategy.
Putin directed these influence operations. For example, “Putin had purview over the activities of Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian legislator who played a prominent role in Russia's election influence activities. Derkach has ties to Russian officials as well as Russia's intelligence services.” Who met with Andriy Derkach? Rudy Giuliani, who received $300,000 from an associate of Derkach and became one of the biggest purveyors of the lie that the Bidens were doing corrupt crimes in Ukraine. I wrote all about it here.
Russia’s intelligence services and their proxies (particularly those with links to Ukraine) focused their efforts on a narrative “alleging corrupt ties between President Biden, his family, and other US officials and Ukraine. Russian intelligence services relied on Ukraine-linked proxies and these proxies' networks—including their US contacts—to spread this narrative to give Moscow plausible deniability of their involvement.” This Russian intelligence network began spreading this false narrative as early as 2014.
Derkach (Giuliani’s buddy), Konstantin Kilimnik (former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s buddy) and their associates “sought to use prominent US persons and media conduits to launder their narratives to US officials and audiences. These Russian proxies met with and provided materials to Trump administration-linked US persons to advocate for formal investigations; hired a US firm to petition US officials; and attempted to make contact with several senior US officials. They also made contact with established US media figures.”
“As part of his plan to secure the reelection of former President Trump, Derkach publicly released audio recordings four times in 2020 in attempts to implicate President Biden and other current or former US Government officials in allegedly corrupt activities related to Ukraine.” Derkach also promoted such claims by reaching out directly to senior US government officials.
We have seen the Derkach network in action more recently. As I wrote about here, Simona Mangiante, the wife of George Papadopoulos—a Trump campaign foreign policy advisor who pleaded guilty to lying about his contacts with Russians; who met with Joseph Mifsud, the missing Maltese professor who is a Russian intelligence agent; and who told an Australian diplomat that Russia was planning to help Trump win in 2016 by releasing dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of missing emails—interviewed Derkach in January. Derkach used the opportunity to launch a number of new false narratives (extrajudicial killings by Biden administration officials! Deep State crimes!). Probably just a coincidence that former Trump lackeys are pushing such bullshit, right?
I have always found it strange and irritating that journalists who write about Republicans’ attempts to impeach Biden for this alleged corruption never include the context I just gave you. Rather, they have treated the impeachment charade as a legitimate exercise based on actual evidence. It’s not. Republicans have built their case on lies from Russian intelligence.
How Did Sitting Members of Congress Know to Ask for Smirnov’s Story?
The basic gist of the fake Biden corruption story—that Burisma officials had to pay $5 million each to Joe and Hunter Biden to get Joe to shut down a corruption investigation of the company—was provided by Smirnov to the FBI, which documented it in what is called an FD-1023.
As I understand it, an FD-1023 is raw, unverified intelligence. It simply documents what someone says, but provides zero context or assessment. So, for example, if a source reports to the FBI, “Joe Biden kidnapped me and forced me onto his flying saucer where he and his lizard brethren probed me,” that would be documented in an FD-1023. The FBI agent’s assessment that the source is a fucking lunatic would not be included in that document, but rather recorded elsewhere.
Somehow, Senator Chuck Grassley and House Republicans Jim Jordan and James Comer knew about this FD-1023 from Smirnov and subpoenaed it in order to make the information in it public. They insisted it was a crucial piece of evidence against Biden.
How did those Republicans know to ask for that form? How did they know it existed? Every mention of it in the media that I have seen has been some form of: “It has come to our attention” this form exists and therefore we need to see it. How did it come to their attention?
What is the chain of sourcing here? Smirnov tells the FBI. The FBI records it. Who tells Grassley/Jordan/Comer about it? Did Giuliani tell them? Derkach? Other cutouts we don’t yet know about? Did Grassley/Jordan/Comer know Smirnov was getting the information from Russian intelligence? Again, they should have known, given the DNI report I outlined above. But that information did not end up with those Republicans by chance. It was coordinated. We just don’t know all the cutouts (yet).
How Are We Losing The Influence Game To Such Bad Operators?
In court documents, prosecutors note that Smirnov’s meetings with Russian intelligence “were not benign.”
“He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November,” they wrote. Indeed, after one such meeting, Smirnov introduced a new false narrative about Joe and Hunter Biden, raising the possibility (and threat) that Hunter had been secretly recorded at a hotel in Kyiv. Just one small problem: Hunter has never been to Ukraine.
This is part of why this situation is so infuriating: the Russians aren’t even all that good. They made up a story that was very easy to disprove! And yet we are letting them best us, mostly because Russia has people on the US side working for the same objective. Wittingly or unwittingly, Grassley, Comer, Jordan, Giuliani, Trump, Steve Bannon, and so many others pushing the false narrative about the Bidens help give the Russian influence operation life.
We have not seen Chinese or Iranian disinformation operations gain the same kind of traction as we have seen with numerous Russian false narratives. Why? If disinformation is left in the wild, with only a partial network, it dies. But if there is wider coordination with, say, a political campaign, then the US side of that equation makes sure the narrative gets picked up and distributed widely, far beyond the Russian channels of recruited journalists and influencers. The US side enables the operation.
For now, the Republican party seems to be just fine with that.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of stories you should be reading
UNITED STATES
US celebrities unwittingly recruited to undermine Moldova’s president (DFRLab)
EUROPE
Brussels spyware crisis expands (Politico)
Moscow hired gunmen to murder Russian defector, Spanish intel says (Politico)
RUSSIA
What to know about Yulia Navalnaya as she vows to take on Vladimir Putin (Washington Post)
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
I saw a post last night that provided more specifics (but of course can't find it now) but this older reporting touches on same subject, this bank has ties to Smirnov and Trump, cousin(?) with same first name but different spelling (k in place of x) and needs a closer look.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/13/trump-truth-social-loan-questions/
This one is a lie, but just because something is sourced from Russian Intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean it’s untrue, does it? There may be elements of truth, but the way it’s portrayed can be false. (I’m thinking of the scene from My Cousin Vinnie where the cop reads from the transcript: “I killed those guys, I killed those guys, I killed those guys.” Ralph Macchio’s character had indeed said those words, but with a different intonation, and different meaning.)
Or I guess it could be 100% true and just serve Russian ends? Like Fani Willis’s affair with the Trump prosecutor. It could be 100% true, but if it disrupts the Trump trial in GA, Russian (and/or other) interests may be furthered. The fact that the affair came out, however, could be the result of a foreign intelligence organization, right? How did it come out, actually?