David Weiss Chose Not to Record the Alexander Smirnov Interview He Attended

Alexander Smirnov has started filing motions in limine. I’ll return to them after Tuesday.

But for the moment I want to flag a detail he included in a motion to exclude the interview he had on September 27, 2023.

The interview takes up four pages of the indictment. In addition to providing varying statements about the charged false statement — that is, that in a call in 2019, Mykola Zlochevsky accused Joe Biden of accepting a bribe — Smirnov allegedly told a new false story, one that is not charged. he claimed that Hunter Biden had been recorded at the Premier Palace in Kyiv. As the indictment pointed out, that was obviously false, as Hunter Biden had never been to Kyiv.

I’ve always argued that that was an attempt to string on investigators, to give them more dirt on Hunter Biden, precisely what (I speculated) Smirnov perceived that they wanted.

But it was not charged for any of the claims he made in that interview, in which he substantially restated the initial false claim.

This may be why: His motion in limine describes that Special Counsel — that is, David Weiss — attended the interview, and it was not recorded.

Despite seeking an Indictment based solely on statements made in June 2020, Mr. Smirnov understands that the Government intends to introduce statements Mr. Smirnov allegedly made more than three years later, during his interview the FBI on September 27, 2023. Special Counsel was present at this interview, which was never recorded.

This is not — not remotely!! — how you approach an interview with a guy you suspect of lying.

On the contrary, it’s how you approach an interview with someone you’re still treating as a witness against someone else.

This strongly suggests that as late as September 27, 2023 David Weiss was still chasing the effort, launched by Bill Barr’s DOJ, to frame Joe Biden.

As I’ll explain more next week, there are other elements that suggest Weiss and his prosecutors are trying to hang all this exclusively on Smirnov.