The former FBI informant charged with fabricating the Burisma bribery story about President Biden and his son Hunter had “extensive and extremely recent” contacts with foreign intel services, prosecutors alleged Tuesday in a court filing.
Yes, including Russian intel.
The revelation came in arguments that Special Counsel David Weiss, who is also prosecuting Hunter Biden, made for detaining Alexander Smirnov pending his trial. (Smirnov was ultimately released under conditions yesterday.)
The implications of this Russian operation are staggering, especially for the willing Republicans and right-wing media stooges who were the useful idiots propagating the disinformation for years. The James Comers, Chuck Grassleys, Jim Jordans of the world have been trafficking in this stuff as the purported basis for a Biden impeachment, which is itself tightly yoked to Trump’s campaign for re-election. Right-wing outlets, most notably Fox News, have been amplifying the claims not dozens or hundreds but thousands of times over the past several months.
Everywhere you turn, it’s Russia either helping Trump directly or indirectly by damaging Trump’s foes. The pattern is clear and persistent but also so sweeping and far-reaching that it really requires taking a step back to grasp the full scope of it all. It has dominated right-wing media, become an accepted “fact” among MAGA adherents, and allowed elected Republicans to play mainstream media like a cheap fiddle. All those breathless Biden impeachment process stories? They’re an outgrowth of this disinformation campaign.