A Missing Piece of the Puzzle

I’m off today for Presidents Day, but I wanted to take a moment to plug a fascinating piece I worked on over the weekend, which is coming out tomorrow in my team’s publication, The Big Picture.

While I cover broad legal developments and how they intersect with our politics, I often rely on deep dives by some of my favorite legal experts. One of them is Marcy Wheeler, who writes the EmptyWheel newsletter. Something about the indictment against the FBI informant Alexander Smirnov has been bugging us both, mostly because the idea of opening a bogus investigation into Joe Biden for bribery is exactly what Trump tried to get President Zelenskyy to do in 2019. In fact, it’s what got him impeached.

So did Trump try to use his own Justice Department to frame Biden, too?

And is Bill Barr covering his track on this?

It was Special Prosecutor David Weiss—the one who charged Hunter Biden with tax evasion after the plea deal suddenly blew up—brought the indictment. So that’s also a bit odd already.

And while all the papers were talking mostly about how this seriously undermines the GOP’s case for impeachment against Joe Biden, which of course is true, I was interested in the origin story of Smirnov and his claims.

How did the false accusations become weaponized by the GOP in the first place? Was Rudy Giuliani, or Bill Barr, or Trump himself somehow behind all of this? Why, if it was clear that Smirnov was lying, did it take so long to prosecute? And why are there some glaring inconsistencies between what Bill Barr told reporters about the investigation and what the indictment actually says?

That’s the subject of my conversation tomorrow with Marcy Wheeler, who has taken the deep dive necessary to get some of these questions answered—and to ask some even tougher ones.

If you aren’t subscribed to The Big Picture, this is a terrific time to do so. And if you can, please consider supporting our kind of hard hitting, independent reporting with a paid subscription when you get to the sign-up screen.

Have a great day, and if you’ve subscribed, look for my piece in The Big Picture with Marcy Wheeler in your inbox tomorrow!

Jay