NBC’s Tom Winter Explains In Precise Detail Why Ex-FBI Informants Russian Intelligence Ties are ‘Extraordinary’
NBC News reporter Tom Winters went into great detail to explain why the revelation that a former FBI Informant has Russian intel ties is such an “extraordinary” deal.
Winters appeared on Morning Joe Wednesday morning, one day after a court filing — specifically, a detention memo — had significant implications and contained “a whole lot of new information.”
“When you look at the filing yesterday, they went really deep in unclassified information, information that was unclassified on Valentine’s Day when Smirnov was arrested, deep into his background: that he was a 10-year plus source for the FBI, that he had a handler that he talked to nearly every day, which is a lot, by the way, for somebody who’s a confidential human source,” Winters said of Alexander Smirnov, the now arrested former FBI informant.
According to Winters, Smirnov “admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about ‘Business Person One,’ who we’ve publicly identified as Hunter Biden.”
“So he told the FBI after he’s in handcuffs, ‘Yes, I did this and that. It came from individuals associated with Russian intelligence,'” Winters explained to Willie Geist. “There’s additional information that is contained in this document. You read some of the quotes, Willie, but it shows that overall, he lied about a series of meetings in 2015 and 2016 and phone calls in 2016 and 2017. And he didn’t pay attention to what he already told the FBI.”
He then turned to the FBI form at issue in this story, a document known as a 1023. ” The 1023 is an interesting part of this because it speaks to the congressional component — If you remember, there was a big fight in Congress about whether or not a 1023 from a confidential human source about the Bidens should be released from the FBI. That happened in the spring of last year. This is ongoing. And then, at some point, it’s released.”
Smirnov then speaks with the FBI again on multiple occasions, according to the document, including even information about what Hunter Biden was up to at a hotel in Ukraine. “The problem with that is prosecutors say Hunter Biden’s never been there,” Winters notes.
“So it raises questions as to whether or not the Russians took a look at the fact that information they’re feeding this guy can go direct to Congress,” Winters summarizes. “And they’re smart enough to realize, ‘ Hey, you know what? We don’t even need to try to push this through the FBI. We can just tell this guy whatever information is going to go in a report, and then it might just find its way to Congress.'”
“And there’s no legal vetting here,” Winters said. “There’s nothing here that says whether or not what this guy said was true or not.”
Geist followed up, “Is the FBI suggesting in this filing in some way what it appears to be, which is that the Russian government, Russian intelligence feeding this source that they know has a direct line to the FBI, bad information to damage the Bidens as we enter an election year.”
Winters explained:
“That’s where yesterday’s detention memo really went a step further than in the indictment,” Winters replied. I mean, they said that he was meeting with Russian officials and people were looking through them as well. It sure seems like that could be code for Russian intelligence officials, but they flat out said without they didn’t name those individuals, but they put in a lot of detail about their positions within the Russian intelligence community. He’s meeting with them. And then he says, and they write in their memo that it was after he was arrested that he admitted that the these individuals who are associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a business, story on business person one who is Hunter Biden. So I think that’s a key part of this.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
