Marjorie Taylor Greene questions timing of charges for ex-FBI informant: 'What changed'?

Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Thursday questioned the timing of special counsel David Weiss's decision to bring charges against a former FBI informant who provided the agency with bribery allegations involving the Biden family and the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.

Weiss on Thursday charged Alexander Smirnov over allegedly lying about the scheme, including allegations recorded in a 2020 FBI FD-1023 confidential human source document that Republican congressional investigators uncovered last year. Smirnov was arrested at the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas on Thursday.

"The FBI had the FD1023 form since 2020 and FBI Director Chris Wray told us that the informant was their top paid most credible informant and now all of a sudden David Weiss arrest [sic] him and is pressing charges??? What changed other than a successful impeachment in the House?" Greene posted on X.

The FD-1023 detailed an alleged scheme by which a Burisma executive hired Hunter Biden to secure access to his then-vice president father, Joe Biden, with the aim of crushing then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin's probe of the company. The Burisma executive allegedly paid $5 million each to two Biden family members as part of the agreement. Biden has previously taken credit for getting Shokin fired but contends that he was following U.S. policy.

"In short, the Defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden], the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against [Joe Biden] and his candidacy," Weiss alleged in the indictment. The actual indictment text refers to Biden as "Public Official 1."

Weiss became special counsel last year in the wake of a botched plea agreement with Hunter Biden that the judge rejected. He had led an investigation into the first son since 2018 in his capacity as U.S. Attorney for Delaware. That investigation saw two IRS agents who worked on the investigation come forward with allegations that Biden-appointed officials prevented the prosecutors from bringing the most severe charges against the first son.

Those alleged actions allowed the statute of limitations to expire for potential charges related to the 2014 and 2015 tax years, which "included foreign income from Burisma and a scheme to evade his income taxes through a partnership with a convicted felon," according to IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter.