FBI Informant Who Lied About the Bidens Covertly Released From Jail

Alexander Smirnov, the ex–FBI informant who admitted to lying about the Biden-Burisma connection, has been released from prison just months into his six-year prison sentence.

In a plea deal in December 2024, Smirnov admitted to completely fabricating the conspiracy that became central to a Republican effort to impeach then-President Joe Biden. Days later, the Russian asset pleaded guilty to four felony charges, including one count of obstruction, and was sentenced to six years in prison.

But the U.S.-Israeli citizen has been missing for at least four months from the low-security Los Angeles prison he was relegated to, according to investigative reporter Jacqueline Sweet.

Smirnov is still listed as a prisoner at FCI Terminal Island in Los Angeles, where his anticipated release date is February 2029, according to the Bureau of Prisons. But a process server responsible for handing off details of a civil lawsuit to Smirnov was unable to find him at the facility.

An employee at the prison confirmed to the process server that while “Smirnov is affiliated with the facility,” he was “not currently housed there,” reported Sweet on Friday.

“I was advised to call back in approximately 15 days, as [Smirnov] may or may not return to the facility by that time. The representative was notably guarded and provided minimal information beyond that,” read an email from the server, obtained by Sweet.

After months of failed attempts to find and locate Smirnov, the local Sheriff’s Department managed to receive a clearer response from the facility.

“They’ve confirmed that Mr. Smirnov has been furloughed, but no forwarding or new address has been provided,” the message read.

In June 2020, Smirnov falsely reported to the FBI that Burisma executives had paid Biden and his son Hunter millions of dollars. The fake claim was part of a larger series of unfounded allegations that accused Biden of improperly leveraging his position as vice president (at the time) to prevent a corruption investigation into Burisma, on whose board Hunter sat.

The fraudulent tale also sparked an October surprise in the 2020 election about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon insisted contained evidence that Biden and a Burisma adviser had held a “meeting.” (The New York Post, which ran the original story on its front page, later said that the contents of the laptop were mixed with fake material and that most of the data could not be verified.)

The Justice Department revealed in February 2024 that Smirnov admitted to prosecutors that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved” in developing the Hunter Biden narrative.

In the ensuing fallout over the DOJ indictment, Smirnov told investigators he was in contact with “four different [top] Russian officials,” two of whom were the “heads of the entities they represent.”

Smirnov’s smattering of international affiliations makes the convicted felon a significant flight risk—but another possibility of freedom may await the foreign asset. Earlier this year, the DOJ filed a joint motion alongside Smirnov’s attorneys to release him pending appeal. U.S. District Judge Otis Wright tossed that effort in April, but legal experts stress that the effort could be an early sign that the Trump administration is considering pardoning Smirnov, as “it is almost unheard of for the DOJ to argue for someone’s release pending appeal.”

“I can’t say for sure based on the information I have that a pardon deal is in the works,” Oregon criminal defense attorney Bear Wilner-Nugent told Sweet. “But if one were, this is what it could look like. I can say that this is an extraordinarily concerning way for the government to be treating someone when they’re already accused of improper connections with him.”

President Trump is rejecting visas for fat people.

The Trump administration has ordered visa officers to deny immigrants who are obese or have certain health issues, in yet another instance of the president’s strange obsession with fat people.

A Thursday directive from the State Department, sent to embassies and consulates around the world, indicates that people applying for visas to the United States may be rejected if they have certain medical conditions, on the grounds that they could take up domestic health care resources.

“You must consider an applicant’s health,” the cable read. “Certain medical conditions—including, but not limited to, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, cancers, diabetes, metabolic diseases, neurological diseases, and mental health conditions—can require hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of care.”

The announcement then goes on to mention obesity, stating that it can be connected to asthma, sleep apnea, and high blood pressure.

“All of these can require expensive, long-term care,” the cable continues. “Does the applicant have adequate financial resources to cover the costs of such care over his entire expected lifespan without seeking public cash assistance or long-term institutionalization at government expense?”

Denying fat people from the U.S. because they might end up having health issues is incredibly broad, cruel, and unusual. Visa applicants are already subjected to health screenings for infectious diseases like tuberculosis and are required to have various vaccinations.

“Taking into consideration one’s diabetic history or heart health history—that’s quite expansive,” immigration lawyer Sophia Genovese told the Los Angeles Times. “There is a degree of this assessment already, just not quite expansive as opining over, ‘What if someone goes into diabetic shock?’ If this change is going to happen immediately, that’s obviously going to cause a myriad of issues when people are going into their consular interviews.”

This announcement comes just one day after Trump announced his “fat shot” deal with two pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of popular weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Zepbound to around $350 per month (exact costs will vary).*

Trump also took time out of Thursday’s announcement to reveal exactly who was taking the weight-loss drug, outing longtime comms staffer and attack dog Steven Cheung.

“Where’s Steve? Is he here? Head of public relations for the White House? He’s taking it.”

* This piece has been updated with new projected prices of Ozempic and Zepbound.

Donald Trump is apparently not the point person on his own administration’s policy.

In the past 24 hours, the president has repeatedly deferred questions about the mechanics of his government to his foot soldiers, deflecting the responsibilities and duties that he campaigned three times (and at one point allegedly conspired) to acquire.

During an Oval Office press briefing Friday, Trump called on his press secretary Karoline Leavitt to answer a question about rising prices and affordability in his stead.

“We did a great job on groceries and affordability. The only problem is the fake news, you people don’t want to report it. And in fact, I’d like to ask Karoline—where’s Karoline? I’d like to ask Karoline a question,” Trump said.

But Leavitt was outside the room.

“She deserted me,” Trump wailed to laughter from the room, but eventually she returned.

“Karoline, could you discuss that question that was asked and how it was asked in such a fake, disgusting manner by the fake news?” Trump said.

“Yeah, I just saw.… Very unfortunate that the reporter refused to address, sir, what you just said,” Leavitt said, beginning a long scolding for the attending media outlets. “Which is that you inherited the worst inflation crisis in modern American history and you are fixing it in 10 short months, and your entire administration has been tasked with this effort.”

The relationship between Trump and Leavitt seems to be backward: Leavitt is supposed to elevate Trump’s original positions as his press secretary, not the other way around. But it’s not even the first instance this week in which Trump has opted out of functioning as the president.

During a White House meeting with Central Asian leaders Thursday night, a sleepy Trump tapped Vice President JD Vance to speak in his stead on the topic of Kazakhstan joining the Abraham Accords—though that may have actually saved face for the administration, since the president clearly doesn’t know how to pronounce Kazakhstan.

Cornell University has completely bent the knee to the Trump administration, making massive cultural and financial concessions in the process so it can get federal funding back.

On Friday, the university announced that it will pay the Trump administration $30 million over three years for reasons unspecified. It will also invest $30 million in “programs that incorporate AI and robotics, such as Digital Agriculture and Future Farming Technologies.”

Aside from those millions of dollars it’s shelling out, Cornell has agreed to hold “annual surveys to evaluate the campus climate for Cornell students, including the climate for students with shared Jewish ancestry,” to seek out “experts on laws and regulations regarding sanctions enforcement, anti-money laundering, and prevention of terrorist financing,” and hand over “anonymized” undergraduate admissions data directly to the federal government.

The agreement will also see Cornell provide staff with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “Guidance for Recipients of Federal Funding Regarding Unlawful Discrimination,” an anti-woke catchall memo designed to force universities to broadly pull back any kind of diversity, equity, and inclusion–adjacent policy and make culture-war-obsessed right wingers feel better about themselves.

Bondi’s memo declares that “using race, sex, or other protected characteristics for employment, program participation, resource allocation, or other similar activities, opportunities, or benefits, is unlawful.” It additionally bans race-based scholarships, trans people in collegiate sports, and cultural training of any kind.

“The months of stop-work orders, grant terminations, and funding freezes have stalled cutting-edge research, upended lives and careers, and threatened the future of academic programs at Cornell,” university President Michael Kotlikoff wrote in an email to the student body.

This extortion is a result of a monthslong, all-out crackdown on universities and any speech that the Trump administration deems left-wing. Dangling federal funding in the face of schools unless they cave to very narrow, very biased demands will only lead to suppression and resentment.

Donald Trump and his administration may be absent from COP30 climate talks in Belém, Brazil, but its attendees didn’t forget about him.

Several heads of state made speeches at the conference calling out the president by name, including many from South America. Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who compared Trump to Hitler at the U.N. earlier this year, said “Mr. Trump is against humankind,” while Chile’s president Gabriel Boric took aim at the president’s climate denialism.

“That is a lie,” Boric said about Trump calling climate change a “con job” and a “hoax made up by people with evil intentions.”

“We might have legitimate discussions about how to face these things, but we cannot deny them,” added Boric.

Some alluded to Trump without mentioning his name. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president and a target of Trump’s ire, criticized “extremist forces that fabricate fake news on climate for political gain, while French President Emmanuel Macron urged his fellow leaders to “support free and independent science.”

“We must choose multilateralism over isolationism, science over ideology, and action over fatalism,” Macron added. Paris was the location of a landmark climate deal 10 years ago, agreed to by 200 nations including the U.S. under President Obama, only for Trump to withdraw during his first term as president.

Joe Biden’s election and re-entry into the agreement was short-lived with Trump’s reelection, and the MAGA Republican surprised nobody by immediately undoing many of his predecessor’s climate efforts. Now, the U.S. under Trump refuses to be a part of climate solutions, while the rest of the world is still trying to mitigate the crisis.