It’s amazing how many people Donald Trump has been involved with who end up going to prison. Not to mention the ones who end up dead, whether they’re innocent bystanders or guilty as hell. I’m thinking Jeffrey Epstein on the one hand and the Capitol police officers on the other. Trump is a lightning rod for all things evil and destructive. Today Alexander Smirnov got sentenced to six years in prison for lying to the FBI about a Burisma bribery scheme involving both Joe and Hunter Biden, which was completely fabricated.
Alexander Smirnov pleaded guilty last month in Los Angeles federal court to tax evasion and lying to the FBI about the phony bribery scheme in what prosecutors say was an effort to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Smirnov, a dual U.S. and Israeli citizen, falsely claimed to his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid then-Vice President Biden and his son $5 million each around 2015.
Smirnov’s explosive claim in 2020 came after he expressed “bias” about Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, according to prosecutors. In reality, investigators found Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Burisma starting in 2017 — after Biden’s term as vice president.
Prosecutors noted that Smirnov’s false claim “set off a firestorm in Congress” when it resurfaced years later as part of the House impeachment inquiry into President Biden, a Democrat who defeated Republican then-President Donald Trump in 2020. The Biden administration dismissed the House impeachment effort as a “stunt.”
Before Smirnov’s arrest, Republicans had demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if they were true.
“In committing his crimes he betrayed the United States, a country that showed him nothing but generosity, including conferring on him the greatest honor it can bestow, citizenship,” Justice Department special counsel David Weiss’ team wrote in court papers. “He repaid the trust the United States placed in him to be a law-abiding naturalized citizen and, more specifically, that one of its premier law enforcement agencies placed in him to tell the truth as a confidential human source, by attempting to interfere in a Presidential election.”
This is a good news/bad news situation: Yes, it is good news that the rule of law still works and that a lawbreaker has been brought to justice. That fact ratifies our faith in our judicial system and in our culture. But the bad news? That the miscreant who is at the center of all of these shenanigans walks away clean.
That is Donald Trump. The little fish, his lieutenants, his minions, end up going to prison for lying, cooking the books, whatever the charges may be. But the mob boss himself remains at his clubs in a perpetual Baccanalian debauch, and he never has to answer to anyone for anything.
Trump is the tumor that sickens this country. And while all the small moles might get excised, the toxic mass that is Trump continues to poison and rot the body politic.
Again, we need to look at this through a glass half full lens, let’s be grateful that the system works somewhat, even though those who abuse it the most run scot free while others pay for their crimes.
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I wonder if Trump will pardon him too? It wouldn’t surprise me one bit. When I’ve read about this guy since it was apparent he’d be going to prison I could resist some snarky, twisted humor given his name. Smirnov. I’ve refrained until now but what the hell: Since HE knows he’s headed to prison has he been working on a recipe for making ‘Toilet VODKA?’
If there were any true justice in the world, Richard Nixon would be in the belly of a hammerhead shark headed south of Easter Island. Hunter S Thompson
Well…that should clear up the idea that the law works. He got pardoned by his buddy, kept security paid for by the taxpayers, and got a library. By ignoring the truth about cannabis, which doesn’t meet either criteria for schedule one, he deliberately placed it there, so he could arrest college kids protesting against Vietnam, and black folks protesting the racist system of law they still live under. THAT IS A FACT! Since then tens of millions of citizens have been criminalized, locked up by alcohol drinkers and tobacco users, two drugs that meet the criteria for schedule one, and two that have killed millions since 1970. Anyone who believes in EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW should see a doctor immediately to see how they can help YOU GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR DELUDED ASS. No worries…Herr Trump will show you in SPADES. Curious I find myself, after all these years, in the same predicament with my country, as I did as a child dealing with my old man, a violent drunk…I loved and hated him at the same time. Impossible you say? If you don’t understand that…go see that doctor immediately.