Left: Hunter Biden (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta). Center: Alexander Smirnov in a courtroom sketch (William T. Robles via AP). Right: Special counsel David Weiss (AP Photo/Matt Slocum).
The indicted decade-long former FBI informant accused of lodging false bribery allegations against President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden filed a “legally flawed, rambling and disorganized” demand for discovery, whether for “information that does not exist,” evidence that has already been shared with the defense, or documents that he isn’t legally entitled to receive.
Two weeks ago, the defense for Alexander Smirnov, headed up by Robert Durst attorney David Chesnoff, asked U.S. District Judge Otis Wright II to order special counsel David Weiss and his team of prosecutors to hand over discovery, claiming that government refused to “[c]ountenance” his requests for the return of his phone, a “positive independent photographic identification” of his “FBI handler,” State Department records underlying the New York Times’ August article “Hunter Biden Sought State Department Help for Ukrainian Company,” and more.
Smirnov is accused of fabricating claims that the Bidens were bribed by executives of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma while Joe Biden was vice president of the United States and Hunter Biden was a member of Burisma’s board to orchestrate the firing of former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin and stave off a criminal probe.
According to the DOJ indictment, Smirnov “had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016, in other words, when Public Official 1 [Joe Biden] had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office.”
“In short, the Defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against Public Official 1 [Joe Biden], the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against Public Official 1 and his candidacy,” the indictment continued. “When he was interviewed by FBI agents in September 2023, the Defendant repeated some of his false claims, changed his story as to other of his claims, and promoted a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials.”
Prosecutors on Monday countered Smirnov’s discovery requests by calling the motion “factually and legally flawed, rambling and disorganized, and wholly unsupported by law,” and by insisting that the government “has repeatedly advised defense counsel that it has complied with its discovery obligations.”
“Rather than discuss specific discovery requests and why he believes he is entitled to specific discovery by analyzing his request under applicable precedent, the defendant simply copies and pastes paragraph numbers from his previous discovery letters, does not accurately explain what he believes he is still missing from those requests, and includes only a general discussion of the law governing discovery with hardly any analysis of his requests,” prosecutors said, before telling the judge that the government is not withholding evidence relating to Smirnov’s “interactions with Burisma.”
“As the defendant admits, the government has already produced communications involving Associate 2 related to Burisma. While the defendant contends none of those communications ‘appear to relate to interaction with Burisma officials,’ the government is not withholding communications between the defendant and Associate 2 that ‘appear to relate to interaction with Burisma officials,”” prosecutors said. “Indeed, the indictment alleges that the defendant falsely described various interactions related to Burisma. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is no evidence that supports his fabrications.”
“In any event, the defendant concedes that this request is for impeachment material, and the government will produce any such Giglio materials that it discovers that are responsive to this category at least one week before trial,” Weiss added.
From there, the Special Counsel’s Office bashed the phone, FBI handler photo ID, and State Department records demands as legally baseless, the lattermost inviting a “fishing expedition” that has “nothing to do with the defendant’s false statements.”
Read the government’s opposition filing here.
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