The Still Unidentified “Big Guy[s]” in the Alexander Smirnov Saga

With a few weeks to work with, several outlets have done profiles of the shady financial life of Alexander Smirnov, the former FBI informant accused of framing Joe and Hunter Biden.

The AP examines a series of what it calls “duplicitous business schemes,” including a pump and dump scheme.

Even as Smirnov was being paid as a government informant, he participated in duplicitous business schemes, according to court records and interviews.

One example is his investment in an obscure penny-stock company called Eco-Trade Corp.

Such companies can yield a handsome return on a minimal investment. They are lightly regulated and often subject to financial scams and market manipulation.

In 2010, Smirnov purchased a stake in Eco-Trade valued at roughly $3 million as the company was on the verge of launching an advertising blitz that dramatically inflated its value. A crash three years later saddled investors with losses.

WSJ focuses on schemes with closer proximity to Donald Trump — or more importantly, Rudy Giuliani. Of note, WSJ describes several occasions that Smirnov pitched Sam Kislin, a fellow Ukrainian, who has long-standing ties to Rudy and Trump.

Around 2021, on the beach at a private club in Boca Raton, Smirnov pitched Kislin on founding a company together that would market electric-car batteries and capture federal subsidies, Kislin said.

Smirnov told him he also could use his FBI ties to help him unfreeze more than $21 million in infrastructure bonds that belonged to Kislin but which Ukrainian authorities deemed had been issued illegally, embroiling Kislin in a corruption probe, Kislin said.

Kislin had for years been seeking to unfreeze the funds, traveling to Ukraine and meeting with officials there. His travel there coincided with efforts by Giuliani and his associates to push the Ukrainian government to investigate Biden, and in 2019, Kislin was subpoenaed by House impeachment investigators who were looking into those efforts. Kislin’s lawyer said he didn’t have relevant information, and he didn’t ultimately testify.

Smirnov set his fee for recovering Kislin’s $21 million at $1 million, according to Kislin, who said he paid Smirnov $224,000—partially as an advance and partially as an investment in the car-battery company, incorporated in Nevada in May 2021 as Quantum Force.

After a little over a year, Quantum Force dissolved and registered by the same name in a different state—this time without Smirnov listed in the corporate records.

When a solution to Kislin’s problem in Ukraine failed to materialize, Kislin said he deduced that Smirnov had taken him for a ride.

And while WSJ notes that Smirnov was repeatedly admonished that he might have to testify at trial, neither story notes he was admonished at least five times that the “Otherwise Illegal Activity” that he engaged in to stay close to subjects of interest to the FBI could not include obstruction.

In addition, when the Defendant was authorized to engage in illegal activity for investigative purposes, he was further admonished that: “Under no circumstances may the CHS … Participate in an act that constitutes obstruction of justice (e.g., perjury, witness tampering, witness intimidation, entrapment, or fabrication, alteration, or destruction of evidence, unless such illegal activity has been authorized).” When the Defendant was given this admonishment, he signed an FBI form that contained this statement, including on 10/8/2014, 1/18/2017, 10/8/2018, 1/10/2019, and 8/7/2020.

These sketchy business schemes were presumably the point — they were the reason Smirnov was useful to the FBI, because they provided the FBI access to learn about suspected crooks of more interest.

But his larger network is of interest for two other reasons.

First, because Scott Brady’s explanation for how he came upon Smirnov’s 2017 FD-1023 mentioning Hunter Biden — first telling Republicans he simply searched on Hunter Biden and Burisma, then telling Democrats something much more squishy — is garbage. There is nothing about the mention of Hunter in a 2017 FD-1023 claimed as that link that should have led Brady to look further.

During this call, there was a brief, non-relevant discussion about [Public Official 1]’s son, [Businessperson 1], who is currently on the Board of Directors for Burisma Holdings [No Further Information].

One possible link is that the process of (per Chuck Grassley) shutting down an investigation into Mykola Zlochevsky created the possibility of a derogatory conversation in 2019, which Smirnov claimed in 2020 but disclaimed in an FBI interview last September.

But another is that someone knew that, if asked, Smirnov would be willing to fabricate bribery allegations on demand. That someone would presumably need to know both that Smirnov was an FBI informant and that he had met with Zlochevsky in the past, even if not in a period that was convenient for a story about Joe Biden’s imagined corruption.

In Jerry Nadler’s referral of Scott Brady to DOJ Inspector General for misleading the Committee, he included an email from someone — he describes it as one of the investigators — telling the lead AUSA on the project that, two days after his interview with Brady, Rudy was in Florida, speaking “to the original source [redacted].”

There are plenty of Ukrainians in Florida from whom Rudy might have been digging dirt (Smirnov’s cousin, for example, lives there and has ties to Trump world). If such sources also had reason to know about Smirnov’s work with the FBI, they might provide guidance to look for the innocuous 2017 informant report as a pretext to set up an interview with Smirnov.

But by description, Smirnov was trading on his ties to the FBI, so plenty of people might have been able to offer his name as a worthwhile source.

There’s one other reason Smirnov’s network is of some interest.

In the allegedly fraudulent FD-1023, Smirnov used a line that would become famous months later when Tony Bobulinski would pitch it: Big Guy.

CHS mentioned Zlochevsky might have difficulty explaining suspicious wire transfers that may evidence any (Illicit) payments to the Bidens. Zlochevsky responded he did not send any funds directly to the “Big Guy” (which CHS understood was a reference to Joe Biden). CHS asked Zloehevsky how many companies/bank accounts Zlochevsky controls; Zlochevsky responded it would take them (Investigators) 10 years to find the records (i.e. illicit payments to Joe Biden). CHS told Zlochevsky if he ever needed help in the future and wanted to speak to somebody in the US government about that matter, that CHS could Introduce him to someone. [my emphasis]

While it’s true that some of Hunter Biden’s associates would recognize (and dispute) the use of the term by others, Hunter told Congress he doesn’t use the term.

Q One final question, because our round is up, I know everyone’s disappointed by that.

But the reference to the big guy, you would agree, is a reference to your father?

A I truly don’t know what the hell that James was talking about. All I know is that what actually happened.

[snip]

Mr. Raskin. Just, on the question of nicknames, I have not seen your father referred to as the big guy anywhere else in this record. Was that his nickname in your family, the big guy?

The Witness. No.

Mr. Raskin. Did you ever call him the big guy?

The Witness. No, I never called him that.

Hunter occasionally used “my guy” to refer to his father. Not The Big Guy.

When Smirnov’s FD-1023 was released last summer, the frothy right took this reference to the “Big Guy” not just that this allegation of corruption was true, but that Tony Bobulinski’s was too.

So it remains a fairly important question why — months before Tony Bobulinski went public with the “Big Guy” email, but months after he (described that he) started considering doing so, at a time Bobulinski was trying to navigate how to come forward, as he was being referred to a former Trump lawyer by someone whose identity he has protected jealously — why Smirnov would use the line that would become famous after Bobulinski made it public.

Smirnov’s shady financial ties are to be expected: that’s why he was useful to the FBI and some of those shady deals likely were negotiated with the FBI’s permission. What’s more interesting is whether any of those shady financial ties would explain why Smirnov told the specific story he did.

Update: I forgot, when I did this post, that I had already put the dates of Smirnov’s admonishments into a table.