A judge ordered U.S. marshals on Friday to transfer Alexander Smirnov, the former informant who stands accused of lying to the FBI, to California for a hearing next week to address whether Smirnov will remain in custody.
Smirnov was arrested a second time in Las Vegas on Thursday after he was charged by the Department of Justice with making false statements to federal investigators that were designed to damage President Joe Biden politically. Smirnov was initially arrested last week on the same charges and successfully convinced a judge in Nevada to grant his temporary release with conditions, including wearing an ankle monitor.
Special counsel David Weiss, however, appealed the Nevada judge’s decision by asking the judge assigned to the case, Judge Otis Wright of the Central District of California, to reconsider whether Smirnov should be released.
Wright, by law, has the final say over whether Smirnov should stay in custody since his district is where Smirnov’s indictment was originally filed.
Prosecutors argued to Wright that Smirnov, an Israeli American, is a flight risk because he has no immediate family in the United States and scant ties to the country in general, access to millions of dollars, and “extensive and extremely recent” contact with Russian intelligence officials.
“Smirnov’s efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States continues,” prosecutors warned.
In a striking order responding to Weiss’s request, Wright not only ordered the marshals to transport Smirnov to Los Angeles for a hearing on Monday morning, but he also accused Smirnov and his defense attorneys of plotting for Smirnov to flee.
“It has come to this Court’s attention that counsel for defendant has sought an emergency hearing in the District of Nevada to arrange the release of Defendant Smirnov, likely to facilitate his absconding from the United States,” Wright wrote.
Smirnov’s attorneys did not directly respond to the accusation but said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner that they plan to continue to fight for their client’s release.
“We are advocating for Mr. Smirnov’s release in both the federal district court and in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. We will have no comment on the case and look forward to appearing in the appropriate federal court,” attorneys David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld wrote.
Weiss’s indictment and subsequent court filings arguing to keep Smirnov detained were aggressive and repeatedly referenced Smirnov’s alleged contacts with Russian intelligence officials.
Andy McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and legal analyst, said nonpublic underlying variables could support Weiss’s forceful push to keep Smirnov in custody, but, McCarthy said, his repeated references to Russia are “totally gratuitous.”
“My own view of this is that this is a messaging exercise where Weiss is trying to stress Russian intelligence,” McCarthy said. “It was totally gratuitous to put that stuff in the indictment. The Russian intelligence stuff that he put in there, it’s not relevant to either of the charges in the indictment.”
He added that the intelligence community typically fights the DOJ “tooth and nail” to omit such details.
“So, I have to think that the purpose of that is to get the storyline out there that he’s Russian intelligence, or that he’s being fed at least Russian intelligence,” McCarthy said of Smirnov.
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Russia’s interference in U.S. politics has been a source of controversy for years. Some critics of the DOJ were quick to point out after Smirnov’s arrest that the department, for example, never prosecuted Christopher Steele, who compiled a dossier filled with unproven allegations that former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.
The DOJ did, however, prosecute Igor Danchenko, a Russian national who was a source to Steele. Danchenko, who faced the same charges that Smirnov faces now, was not held in custody while he awaited prosecution, and a jury ultimately acquitted him in 2022.
