Last Week in Legal - Illegitimate Special Counsels Edition
FBI suddenly doesn't trust their informant, Trump throws more dismissal requests at the wall, the first Rust movie trial has started, and Massie needs some help.
Hunter Biden Legal Troubles
Hunter’s legal team in California (the tax case) filed a whole bunch of Notices that they will be filing motions to dismiss. The dismissal motions look to be similar to many of Trump’s attempts to dismiss his cases, including “vindictive prosecution,” and that Special Counsel David Weiss is an illegitimate appointment, based on the same reasoning for Trump’s recent motion in the FL case.
In related news, the FBI informant Alexander Smirnov was arrested last week. Smirnov was the whistleblower at the heart of the Comer/Jordan investigation into Hunter and Joe. He had been a trusted informant for over ten years, but suddenly the FBI thinks he lied, but only about the Bidens. The official indictment has some damning accusations, but considering the source - the FBI - it is worth a healthy dose of skepticism.
There is enough there to make you question the informant’s story, but also not enough to prove he lied about anything. For instance, Smirnov tells investigators that his contacts in Russia (which he was asked to foster as part of his role as an informant) claim that Russia got blackmail material on Hunter at the Premier Palace, which is a hotel in Kiev, Ukraine. But Hunter's never been to Kiev. However, remember that video from the laptop where Hunter tells a hooker that Russians stole his laptop in Vegas while he was tripping bawls? We have no idea where that happened in Vegas, but there is a Palace Station Hotel that sells Premier suites. So, since the informant's story is coming 2nd/3rd/4th hand via contacts in Russia, is it possible that the Russian contacts got the name of the hotel wrong, leading the informant to think it was the one in Kiev? The government doesn't answer that question, or even explore it as an option. Instead, the indictment declares that because Hunter has never been to Kiev, the informant must be lying.
Regardless, the arrest has already had the desired effect of undermining the joint congressional investigation led by Comer and Jordan. Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) has already run to the press to slam Comer and Jordan. The media is screaming about Russian collusion again, and claiming the intel community who authored the letter that said Hunter’s laptop was a Russian disinformation campaign have been vindicated.
Add to this, the firing of Catherine Herridge from CBS, who took the unprecedented step of seizing her computers and work when they kicked her out the door. Even SAG-AFTRA has condemned CBS for the move. There is a theory that she was canned in an attempt to smooth the way for an upcoming sale that will need the government’s ok. Herridge was well-known for her work on the Hunter laptop and other Biden family corruption scandals. Now the fear is that CBS may have information on who her informants are, and what they will do with that information.