Tangle - The arrest of the Biden informant.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

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Starting point is 00:01:05 your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place to get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about that Biden informant who was just arrested by the FBI

Starting point is 00:02:03 for making false allegations to federal officials. We're going to be talking about what this arrest means, what the indictment has to do with the Biden impeachment inquiry, and all the interesting, fun stuff swirling around that. Before we jump in though, let's kick it off as always with some quick hits. First up, the Biden administration canceled roughly $1.2 billion of student loans for 153,000 borrowers and plans to email each borrower to alert them. Number two, officials from the University of Alabama at Birmingham are pausing their in vitro fertilization treatments after the state Supreme Court extended legal rights to frozen embryos. Number three, with a bipartisan border bill stalled in Congress, President Biden is considering executive action to restrict asylum claims at the southern border. Number four, New York Attorney

Starting point is 00:03:01 General Letitia James said she is prepared to seize Donald Trump's properties, including Trump Tower, if he fails to pay his $354 million civil fraud fine. And number five, James Biden, the brother of President Biden, testified to Republicans behind closed doors on Wednesday as part of their impeachment inquiry. Back here in Washington, fallout on Capitol Hill after a former FBI informant was charged with lying about President Biden and his son Hunter's ties to a Ukrainian energy company. House Republicans have used the now indicted informant as one of their main sources in the investigations of the president and his family. Tonight, we have just learned that the special counsel in the Hunter Biden case is now charging a confidential FBI source, accusing him of lying about Hunter Biden and his father and their role in Ukraine business. So what does this mean now

Starting point is 00:04:05 amid the accusations on the Hill against the Bidens? Special Counsel David Weiss charging Alexander Smirnoff provided the FBI false derogatory information, claiming Burisma executives told him they'd hired Hunter Biden when his father was vice president to, quote, protect us through his dad from all sorts of problems. The FBI determining that was not true. The indictment further charges Smirnoff lied when he told agents Burisma executives paid the Bidens a $5 million bribe when Joe Biden was vice president. Last week, the FBI arrested Smirnoff, an informant the FBI had used as a confidential source since 2010. Smirnoff was

Starting point is 00:04:46 charged with lying to the FBI that President Biden and his son Hunter were involved in a bribery scheme with Ukrainian energy company Burisma. A quick reminder, in the summer of 2020, Smirnoff told his FBI handler that he had a series of meetings and phone calls with executives from the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma in 2015 and 2016. In those meetings, Smirnoff said Burisma executives admitted that Hunter Biden was added to the board so his dad Joe could protect them from problems they may have with U.S. officials. Smirnoff also said that executives told him Hunter and Joe Biden forced Burisma to pay them each $5 million in bribes to ensure Ukraine's Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin, was fired, and he claimed that he possessed 17 recordings,

Starting point is 00:05:31 text messages, and financial documents as proof of the entire scheme. Smirnoff's claims were memorialized at the FBI in a four-page report known as an FD-1023, which was eventually subpoenaed by Republicans in Congress and then leaked to the press. The report had not been fact-checked before it was leaked, and the FBI warned that such source material includes leads and suspicions, not conclusions made by investigators. However, it became instant political fodder when Senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican from Iowa, publicly released a copy of the record and described the claims as very significant allegations from a trusted FBI informant implicating then-Vice

Starting point is 00:06:10 President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme, though he never named Smirnoff. Republicans in Congress, most notably Representative James Comer, the Republican from Kentucky, have since used those documents as the backbone of their impeachment inquiry into Biden. So now what? Well, the Justice Department has indicted Smirnoff on charges that he fabricated his allegations. On Tuesday, prosecutors also alleged in a 28-page filing that Smirnoff had extensive and extremely recent contacts with foreign intelligence services, including Russia's, and described him as an incessant liar who continues to make up misinformation and pass it on to his FBI handlers. The defendant's story to the FBI

Starting point is 00:06:51 was a fabrication, prosecutors alleged. Smirnoff transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against President Biden. According to prosecutors, Smirnoff hadn't met with officials from Burisma until 2017. He never delivered the documents, recordings, or records he promised. During a custodial review in February, Smirnoff conceded that Russian officials were involved in passing along some of the stories he shared about Hunter. However, prosecutors stopped short of saying that the claims about the Biden family bribery scheme were lies coming from his contacts in Russia.

Starting point is 00:07:28 When prosecutors interviewed Smirnoff again in September, he changed his story on some claims and made up new ones, they said. Included in his new false allegations were claims that he saw footage of Hunter entering a hotel in Kiev, Ukraine, and that the hotel was wired and Hunter was recorded while he was inside. Ukraine, and that the hotel was wired and Hunter was recorded while he was inside. Investigators know that Smirnoff's story is false because Hunter Biden has never traveled to Ukraine, prosecutors said. In a bizarre twist, it's prosecutors operating under David Weiss, the special counsel who is separately prosecuting Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges, who brought the case against Smirnoff forward. Today, we're going to explore some reactions to this indictment from the right and the left, and then my take. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break.

Starting point is 00:08:23 All right, first up, we'll start with what the right is saying. The right takes Smirnoff's indictment seriously, but doesn't think it clears Biden of all wrongdoing. Some criticize House Republicans for staking their investigation on such flimsy evidence. Others suggest special counsel Weiss should be removed from the case for negligence. In the New York Post, Jonathan Turley argued this lying witness does not exonerate the Bidens. The allegation has produced a stampede of Democrats who view this indictment as a much-needed talking point as the House continues to build the case of influence peddling by the Biden family, Turley wrote. However, there are a couple of aspects to the filing that

Starting point is 00:09:00 undermine the claim of a bombshell revelation of a Russian disinformation campaign. First, these disclosures were not the result of surveillance or interceptions by American intelligence. Smirnoff appears to have been cooperating with the United States and told his U.S. handler about all of these contacts. Second, Smirnoff's contacts were described as recent and did not apparently precede 2020. They have nothing to do with the laptop or the evidence of influence peddling found in emails on that computer. Third, the Justice Department states that Smirnoff had expressed bias against Joe Biden and used his routine and un-extraordinary business contacts with Burisma to make the bribery allegations, Turley said. In relation to the influence peddling investigation, this filing does not change the evidence that the Biden family made millions in shaking down foreign companies and business

Starting point is 00:09:48 figures. In the bulwark, William Crystal and Andrew Egger wrote that the Alexander Smirnoff farce takes a sinister turn. The farcical implosion of Smirnoff's claims that he'd heard executives at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma discuss paying $5 million bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden while the latter sat on their board and the former was vice president, has been an enormous embarrassment to the congressional Republicans who had made his allegations a tentpole of their impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Smirnoff's claims were full of holes, so much so that catching him in lies was almost comically easy for special counsel David Weiss's investigators,

Starting point is 00:10:30 Kristallnager added. But if Smirnoff's buffoonish allegations and Republicans' credulousness toward them initially seem comical, the revelation that they may have been planted by Russian agents makes the whole thing far more sinister. Russia has had enough success meddling in our elections on their own. Do they really need to help the entire congressional GOP? In The Federalist, Margo Cleveland said the indictment looks just as bad for David Weiss as the charged FBI informant. The harm here is not merely that investigators wasted time chasing apparently false leads, or that Hunter and Joe Biden suffered from Smirnoff's allegedly false accusations, but also that Smirnoff's lies may overshadow the other unrelated and substantial evidence implicating the Bidens in a pay-to-play scandal, rendering it more difficult to obtain justice, Cleveland wrote. Assuming the allegations against Smirnoff are true,

Starting point is 00:11:16 charges are imminently justified. Also justified? Impeaching David Weiss. Special Counsel Weiss clearly knows how bad this looks because in the indictment, he tried to spin the assessment into the FD-1023 as being closed out by the Pittsburgh FBI office, implying this is why his office did not conduct any further investigative steps, Cleveland said. That alone should justify Weiss's removal, and not merely for what he failed to do, but also because the country can't trust that his special counsel team will follow all the leads, including the ones we don't know about. All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left derides House Republicans for their increasingly chaotic investigation into the Bidens. Some say Smirnoff's indictment should end the impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Others wonder whether Republicans knowingly espouse false information to bolster

Starting point is 00:12:15 their case with the public. In MSNBC, Hayes Brown wrote that the GOP keeps winning in its Biden investigation and hating the results. Rather than hurt Biden, House Republicans have more often than not found that having the power to lead investigations has backfired on them tremendously. Alexander Smirnoff, who's now being charged with lying to the FBI, was charged by the same special counsel that Republicans insisted be appointed to investigate the president and his family, Brown said. Smirnoff's indictment is just the latest GOP self-inflicted wound. The party rushed to launch an impeachment inquiry against Biden, which drew attention to the negligible evidence it had gathered. The sensible thing to do at this point would be to call it quits and admit that there's nothing more to be

Starting point is 00:12:58 gained from going down this rabbit hole. But that would involve Republicans admitting to their own voters that there was nothing to their promises to prove Biden is a criminal and satiate their base's call for his arrest. More likely, though, they'll double down and insist that Smirnoff is being silenced for his bold truth-telling. In CNN, Dennis Aftergut said the indictment pushes the GOP impeachment probe of Biden off the stage. With Smirnoff's indictment for fabricating claims, the air is out of the House inquiry's tires. For those in the fact-based world, the Oversight Committee's impeachment car, driven by Comer, is stuck on the edge of a cliff, with two wheels hanging in thin air, Aftergood wrote. The Smirnoff episode is Exhibit A in what happens when politicians grinding

Starting point is 00:13:40 partisan axes make serious public charges without evidence against elected officials. That shameless behavior erodes citizens' precious trust in government. Unfortunately, the MAGA committee chair seemed to have neither time nor interest in thought, care, competence, or real evidence. All that seems to matter to them is repeating the charges enough times for them to sink into the public consciousness, Aftergood said. From Comer and Jordan, we've seen plenty of spectacle but an absence of light. These point men for Trump and truthlessness are dangerous to democracy. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown.

Starting point is 00:14:27 When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot.

Starting point is 00:14:52 Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. In his status quo sub stack, Jay Kuo discussed how investigations and disinformation have been weaponized. The same guy representatives Comer and Jordan and Senator Chuck Grassley pumped up as a reason to go after Biden for bribery turned out to be a Russian intelligence tool, Kuhl wrote. Now the question is, were GOP leaders just useful idiots for Russian election interference,

Starting point is 00:15:34 or did they know, like Bill Barr and his cronies apparently did, that Smirnoff's claims were false but amplified them anyway to dirty up Biden? but amplified them anyway to dirty up Biden. How amazed the Russians must have been to discover that they could easily mainline disinformation to the American public, not just through social media, but through the very people who are supposed to work to stop it, he wrote. These GOP leaders are at best hapless dupes. They should have known and understood the games Russia was playing with them, but we shouldn't discount the possibility that they were well aware that the Smirnoff claims were false and may have originated from Russian intelligence, and then went along with them anyway. Alright, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take.

Starting point is 00:16:24 So first of all, I'm going to just take a quick victory lap and then I'll explain where this leaves us. As eye-grabbing as this bit of news is, it should not be that surprising if you've been listening to this podcast closely for the last few months. When we initially covered this in September, we were careful to note that the source behind the FD-1023 document was passing along, quote, secondhand allegations through, quote, unverified documents. In my take, I contrasted that evidence to what Democrats put forward in their first impeachment inquiry into Trump, including a recording of a phone call and a whistleblower from inside the U.S. government. Then I said, quote, Republicans don't have any of that. They have one form detailing an uncorroborated claim from an anonymous source that past investigators

Starting point is 00:17:11 didn't seem to find particularly reliable. Even in conservative media, there has not been any blockbuster story proving that President Biden corruptly benefited from or aided his son's dealings. And to be clear, this is not some partisan take on this. Republicans themselves concede they are still on the hunt for evidence. As Representative Nancy Mace, the Republican from South Carolina, said, quote, the inquiry would give us another tool in the toolbox specifically to look at Joe Biden's bank records. Everyone's screaming about the evidence. Where's the evidence? The bank records hold all the evidence. All of this stunk from the beginning. The impeachment inquiry has not had any real decisive focus. Some Republicans say it is about Hunter Biden's shady business dealings and his dad's involvement in them. Others talk about

Starting point is 00:17:56 Biden's mishandling of classified documents or his handling of the border. Some have pointed to the IRS whistleblowers accusing Biden's Justice Department of obstructing the investigation into Hunter, which, to me, is still by far the most damning accusation, for whatever it's worth. But there remains no single clear narrative about what they have uncovered or what crime they are pursuing. This document, though, was supposed to be at the center of it. Some Republicans were willing to admit it was not something to take to the bank, but many others went the opposite direction. The most corroborating evidence we have is that 1023 formed from this highly credible, confidential human source, according to U.S. Attorney Scott Brady, said Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican from Ohio. hysteria that came from Representative Adam Schiff, the Democrat from California, and other Democrats when Trump was in office, it's important to remember the people who blew this into as big of a deal as possible and the people who talked about it in measured, reasonable ways. As Politico

Starting point is 00:18:54 pointed out, Sean Hannity aired 85 segments about this. Kevin McCarthy used this form as justification for launching the impeachment inquiry. The New York Post ran a headline that said, Biden $10 million bribe file released. Burisma chief said he was coerced to pay Joe, stupid Hunter, in bombshell allegations. All of this looks like total nonsense. It's bad enough that the Republican impeachment inquiry looks to be losing steam already, and Comer is conceding there may not even be a vote. He blames the GOP's thin majority, but it's more likely that Hunter's laptop and other purported leads haven't turned up enough evidence to justify an impeachment. And finally, it's worth saying this. There have been a lot of Russia hysterics over the last eight years in America. That has often looked like Democrats pursuing overblown claims about

Starting point is 00:19:44 Donald Trump's collusion. Now, it's looking like Republicans pursuing wild claims about Biden and Ukraine. Russia's government thrives on fear and intimidation domestically and chaos abroad. Domestically, in the last week alone, Putin's government has killed his most prominent political opponent, arrested a U.S. citizen for donating money to Ukraine's war effort, and was likely behind the assassination of a defected pilot in Spain. It has also made significant gains in its war with Ukraine, while division in Congress has stalled any more military aid. Here in the States, Russia's strategy is to muddy the waters with disinformation,

Starting point is 00:20:20 to sow political discord. It's not about one candidate or one person being some secret Russian agent. It's about shifting the focus among politicians and voters. Now, we have credible accusations that Russian officials may have been behind one of the most prominent stories from the last three years in the U.S. media, one that got so much traction with it that Republicans in Congress actually pushed forward impeaching the president because of it. It is not hyperventilating, and it is not Red Scare nonsense to point out how serious that is, especially while one of the most popular media figures in the U.S. is doing a bizarre tour of Moscow's grocery stores in what I can only interpret as an attempt to rehabilitate Russia's image with Americans or degrade the United States. As we continue to get bombarded

Starting point is 00:21:05 with innuendo and rumors about the most prominent politicians in America, all of this is worth considering, just as it was in 2016 with the Trump-Russia narratives. The lesson, as it so often has been, is to proceed with caution and to keep a sharp eye on where stories are percolating and how reliable they really are. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Jack in McPherson, Kansas. How come Peter Navarro gets a jail term for defying a congressional subpoena, but Hunter Biden gets nothing, Jack said. Okay, so there are several key things here that are similar about Navarro and Biden's situations. They were both subpoenaed to appear before a House committee. They both defied the subpoenas

Starting point is 00:22:00 and did not appear before Congress when they were scheduled to do so. In both situations, the leaders of those committees, the January 6th Select Committee for Navarro and the Oversight Committee for Biden, stated that they would initiate proceedings to hold them in content. Here's what Hunter did. First, he defied the subpoena in November, then he said he would testify in a public hearing instead of a private one. Through his legal team, he argued that the subpoena was invalid because it was issued before the impeachment proceeding began into President Biden, adding that he would abide by a new one issued afterwards. Then, Hunter capitulated, agreeing to a closed-door deposition before the House GOP put forward a motion to hold him in contempt of Congress. The whole process was a drawn-out melodrama, but it took less than two months.

Starting point is 00:22:47 Here's what Navarro, the former Trump aide, did. First, he defied the subpoena in February. Then, along with former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, former communications chief Daniel Scavino Jr., and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, he argued that executive privilege prevented him from cooperating with the proceeding. Months later, the House then voted to hold Bannon and Meadows in contempt of Congress. Then it voted to hold Scavino and Navarro in contempt. Before Navarro was ever indicted on the same charges, Bannon, making the same argument about

Starting point is 00:23:15 executive privilege, was indicted, tried, and convicted of contempt of Congress. In September, Navarro was convicted of contempt of Congress. In October, Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison, and he has appealed that decision. Then, finally, in January, nearly a year and a half after he was subpoenaed, Peter Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress. Long story short, the difference is really timing. Hunter showed up in Congress before the House ever voted to hold him in contempt. Navarro argued executive privilege throughout a House vote and a contempt charge, then tested his argument in trial, where it was soundly rebuffed. Hunter never, ever took it that far. All right, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to our under-the-radar section. Tens of thousands of AT&T customers experience outages across the country on Thursday morning with cellular service

Starting point is 00:24:09 and internet down. As many as 73,000 outages were reported at around 8 a.m. Eastern. Some Verizon and T-Mobile customers also reported outages, but both companies said those were all cases of a customer trying to contact someone on AT&T's service. AT&T acknowledged the outages but did not offer an explanation. With no cell service, people are unable to reach emergency services or dial 911. 290 million customers are covered by AT&T's 5G network in the United States. Reuters has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of democratic nations whose elections were targeted by Russia through state-run media and social media between 2020 and 2022 is nine, according to a U.S. intelligence report released in October 2023. In addition to those

Starting point is 00:25:04 nine countries, the number of democratic nations whose elections Russia targeted through social media to amplify domestic narratives about election integrity was 17. The number of U.S. presidents who have faced impeachment inquiries is now six. James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. The percentage of Americans who said they approved of the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry into President Biden in a December 2023 poll from NPR is 49%. The percentage of Americans who said they disapproved of the impeachment inquiry in December of 2023 was 48%. The percentage of Americans who said they approved of the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry into President Biden in October 2023 was 47%, and the percentage who disapproved at that time was 52%.

Starting point is 00:25:50 All right, and last but not least, our Have a Nice Day section. Another person with the same name is famous for his time on SNL, but Virginia's Chris Farley has a different claim to fame. For the past 25 years, he's run a marathon every year in under three hours. That streak seemed to be over this year when he completed the New York City Marathon just over his goal. Then his friends stepped up. Members of the running community organized the NCR Last Chance Marathon on a paved trail in Baltimore County just to give Farley another

Starting point is 00:26:25 shot at keeping his streak going. And he came through, finishing in two hours, 57 minutes, and 36 seconds. I was just relieved and very happy, Farley said. The Washington Post has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtango.com and consider becoming a member. And if you want to get tomorrow's members only Friday edition of the newsletter, be sure to go subscribe.

Starting point is 00:26:55 We'll be back here in your ears on Sunday morning with our new weekly podcast. And we'll see all you guys on Monday as well. Have a great weekend. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75.

Starting point is 00:27:31 And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll see you next time. Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu.

Starting point is 00:28:32 It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.

Tangle - The arrest of the Biden informant.

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