Prosecutors who demanded the rearrest of a former FBI informant accused of lying about $5 million bribes he claimed President Joe Biden accepted are terrified he might flee the country, legal expert said Friday,
Elie Honig appeared on CNN Friday to discuss what host Poppy Harlow described as the "super rare" decision to rearrest Alexander Smirnov, a key witness in House Republicans' impeachment probe who now faces charges that he made false statements to the FBI.
"Here's how unprecedented it is, Poppy, I've never seen it happen this way," Honig said. "This tells me that prosecutors are absolutely terrified that this guy may take off."
Smirnov, also accused of having ties to Russian intelligence, was originally arrested on Feb. 14 but released after a Las Vegas magistrate seized his passport and ordered GPS monitoring.
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"Ordinarily, the next step as a prosecutor is, you wait for the the person to arrive at their assigned district," Honig explained. "That usually takes a week or so. Prosecutors were not willing to wait that long."
Instead they took their pleas to a federal judge in California and Smirnov was rearrested in his attorneys' offices on what they describe as basically the same charges.
"Now he's in custody," Honig said. "This is a very extreme in measure."
Smirnov could face up to 25 years in prison, which Honig argued implied the extreme seriousness of the charges.
"It's a reality of life that confidential informants like this guy go off the rails," Honig said. "When it happens you have to make a decision: Are we charging this guy?
"The fact that they're charging this guy shows me that they believe A) He lied B) In a clear provable way and C) about an event of enormous consequence."
