Despite the fact that the two events occurred nearly four years apart, Willie Geist and Ken Dilanian made a clear connection between Hunter Biden’s laptop and the news of Alexander Smirnov’s arrest and his alleged links with Russian intelligence.
The two Morning Joe pundits cited the worries of fifty-one retired US Intel officers who signed a letter alerting them to the possibility that information from an oddly obtained laptop belonging to Hunter Biden may be released. Now that Smirnov has been detained for lying to the FBI and acknowledging he had ties to Russian intelligence officers, they claimed their claims had been verified.
Republican attempts to impeach President Joe Biden on corruption allegations have suffered greatly as a result of news of Smirnov’s arrest, as the DOJ claims that Biden stole $5 million. was made up from whole cloth by the now-former FBI informant.
Here is how Geist thoughtfully introduced the segment in a detailed manner via Mediaite:
So Ken the revelation of a Russian-linked informant, here comes nearly four years after many in the American Intelligence Committee warned Moscow was behind many of the allegations being levied at the Biden family. In a 2020 letter, 51 former U.S. Intel officials expressed concern about the source of a much-discussed story on the right Hunter Biden’s laptop. As a refresher, three weeks before the last presidential election, the New York Post ran a cover story based on information provided by Donald Trump’s personal attorney at the time, Rudy Giuliani. The story centered around 51 a laptop repairman who came into possession of emails allegedly showing corruption by then-candidate Joe Biden. What we didn’t know at the time since has been alleged now by the Justice Department is that both Giuliani and suspected informant Alexander Smirnoff, the man we’re talking about here, had contacts in the same circle of Russian intelligence agents. So Ken, you’ve been looking into the details of this story. What else can you tell us?
“So, Willie, those 51 former intelligence officials, they paid a steep price for signing that letter to the House,” Dilanian accurately replied. “Republicans conducted an investigation. They brought some of the men to testify under oath. The Republicans said, ‘This was election interference, this was a bogus attempt to suppress a legitimate story.’ And as it turns out, they were right.”
The NBC News Justice and Intelligence correspondent clarified why those claims were correct but in a wholly different manner. Dilanian said:
Not in the sense they said that the laptop was part of a Russian information operation or had all the hallmarks of a Russian information operation. They didn’t say that the contents of the laptop were made up. And obviously we know that they weren’t. Many of them have now corroborated what they said was they were suspicious about why that story was emerging in the middle of an election campaign, and whether Russian intelligence was flogging it or was somehow, amplifying it. And now they’ve been proven correct in the sense that we now know that Russian intelligence, at least according to the, the statements of this informant, bolstered somewhat by this indictment. We’re feeding him information, false information. And let’s be clear that the allegation that this informant made that was false, remember, was that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden took a $5 million bribe.
Now, that was always a specious allegation. Remember, Joe Biden answered it by saying, where’s the money? He released his tax returns after all, like, Donald Trump. But nonetheless, that allegation was seized upon by House Republicans, and it was used to fuel this impeachment effort. And by the way, it’s not just congressional Republicans that have some questions to answer here. It’s the FBI and the Justice Department, because although they concluded that there was no evidence to support the bribery allegation, they also said that this confidential human source was a trusted informant. They relied on him for more than ten years, and only now are they saying, oh, he’s a liar, and we’re inviting him for lying. They need to explain that he 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. But back to those those 51 intelligence officials. I mean, obviously, what they were doing was trying to help Joe Biden acknowledge that they were Democrats. I knew it at the time. You could see it by who was signing the letter. But the point that they were making in that letter holds up over time, which is that the Russians were trying to flog a story that Joe Biden and his son were corrupt.
Geist noted how Rep. Ken Buck alleged in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that both James Comer and Jim Jordan (who are at the center of House GOP impeachment efforts) were warned that Smirnov was a “fraud” and “shady guy,” but they proceeded with their investigation anyway.
Geist then asked his guest: “Are you hearing anything more about that in terms of Republicans knowing that this entire case was shaky and the people upon whom they were relying to make the case were perhaps being, I don’t know, maybe they didn’t know they’re Russian agents, but that their information was bad just to have something to push out into the atmosphere — a fog machine of information, of disinformation about Joe Biden?”
Dilanian replied:
Well, Willie, I always thought that was clear. Leaving aside the question of whether this informant was a Russian intelligence plant. It was clear that his information wasn’t true. As Jackie [Alamany] said, the FBI and the Justice Department under Bill Barr investigated it out of the Western District of Pennsylvania and were unable to corroborate that bribery allegation or any allegations of corruption against Joe Biden. So it was pretty clear that this Republican effort was a cynical, effort from the beginning. But and and so they hear Ken Buck say that it just underscores what a lot of people already believe. But 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 who made up all kinds of things and was also talking to Russian intelligence that it is a big deal. That’s momentous.
