Charging him with false statements is just a ploy to give Biden a talking point.
Weiss’s false-statement theory is that the Biden-incriminating conversations Smirnov had in 2015–16 could not have happened because the travel documents and available witnesses prove that Smirnov was not introduced to Burisma execs until 2017 — when Biden was already out of office and Shokin had already been fired. It will be interesting to see how that shakes out. Smirnov may have shown up for his 2023 reinterview thinking it was a normal debriefing, of the kind he’d been through countless times; but Weiss’s investigators appear to have set up the session so they could make a false-statements case on him — i.e., get him to repeat his alleged 2020 misinformation, then charge him. Yet the indictment does not indicate that any of the interviews of Smirnov were recorded or transcribed. When it is alleged that a person lied in an un-transcribed interview, the government has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt exactly what the witness said; when the FBI and Justice Department could easily have arranged for a recording to avoid any ambiguity about that, yet chose not to, juries tend to wonder why.
These are the words of Andrew McCarthy, who is also quick to point out that it would seem odd that the otherwise smart Smirnov would have presented the FBI with proof that he was lying. In other words, once again something doesn't pass the smell test here. Why is the FBI relying on an un-transcribed interview to prove something that otherwise should have been a no-brainer had they chosen to record it.
Moreover, it would seem that they otherwise did not have enough to charge him without setting up the un-transcribed interview where they asked him to repeat certain things. Why? was there a statute of limitations issue here or did they simply need to set something up that they could "fudge" a little. Make no mistake, the idea of our law enforcement lying to help prosecutions in politicized cases has become common place.
Everyone understands the reasoning behind the selected chosen idea of charging/accusing Smirnov here. They want a talking point for the Bidens. But what is hypocritical here is that Smirnov is being accuse of what many members of the FBI and intelligence community have done themselves, mainly provide false allegations that seem otherwise politicized. David Weiss must be in a shit load of trouble for charging Hunter Biden (a choice that the facts and conditions forced on him). Is this his way of making up for it?
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