- A former KGB official handed a thumb drive containing Hunter Biden disinformation to an aide to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at a celebratory event in May 2019.
- A former KGB official presented the same false information to Justice Department officials in January 2019.
- This presentation marks the earliest known example of Russia-related sources pushing allegations about Hunter Biden and Burisma.
A thumb drive handed by a foreign national in 2019 to an aide traveling with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was linked to Russia trying to influence the 2020 US presidential election with Hunter Biden disinformation. This suggests that efforts by these actors had begun earlier and were broader in scope than in the past. Previously reported.
Two sources with direct knowledge of the case say a thumb drive containing poorly sourced allegations about Hunter Biden and his work at Ukrainian energy company Burisma was stolen from the conservative Claremont Institute's 40th anniversary celebration. At the meeting, he was thrust into the hands of one of Pompeo's aides. May 11, 2019 in Beverly Hills. The man who pressed the thumb drive was a national of an Eastern European country and a guest at the Claremont. At one point, he was also a confidential informant for the FBI under the code name “Laurie.” His real name is known to Business Insider, but to protect the sources that provided information for this article, Business Insider is only identifying him as Laurie.
Laurie, on the other hand, didn't seem worried about the possibility of exposure. When contacted by Business Insider, he initially denied knowing anything about Pompeo. However, when BI sent him a photo of himself and Pompeo attending the celebration, he admitted he was there. “You may publish it,” he wrote. “That’s publicity for me.”
Speaking to officials, Lowry confirmed to Business Insider that she once worked for the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency, before pledging allegiance to her current country. The thumb drive that Mr. Lowry gave to Mr. Pompeo's aide contained some of the same material that Mr. Lowry presented at a briefing to Justice Department officials in Los Angeles several weeks earlier, in January 2019. was.
Asked about the meeting on WhatsApp, Rowley said: “I'm not interested in the past.” He denied giving the thumb drive to anyone at the Claremont Institute event.
Business Insider obtained a copy of the slides that accompanied Lowry's January 2019 presentation. They accuse Hunter Biden and his business associates of engaging in money laundering, tax evasion and fraud. Rowley's slides include a maze of wired charts of his, old news article clippings, and a hodgepodge of links, including various of his websites in Ukraine and Russia. President Biden's first name is repeatedly misspelled as “Joseph.” They do not contain evidence of criminal activity.
Nevertheless, according to a disclosure document prepared by Lowry's contact, FBI whistleblower Jonathan Bouma, the material was taken seriously enough to be passed on to an FBI agent in Delaware who was investigating Hunter Biden. It is said that it was accepted. It also included backup materials in Ukrainian that Business Insider has not seen. Lowry confirmed to Business Insider that he had been in contact with the FBI beforehand.
Lowry's presentation sheds new light on the chronology of efforts by Russia and Donald Trump's operatives to spread allegations about Joe Biden's ties to Burisma to the media and government officials. Questions about the validity of Hunter's lucrative Burisma activities in Ukraine, raised as early as 2015 by the New York Times and explored in a 2018 book by conservative author Peter Schweitzer, have exploded. It wasn't until March that it came to the forefront of political conversation. 2019. It was also the same month that Rudy Giuliani gave Mr. Pompeo a folder of Hunter Biden materials obtained from Ukraine and that right-wing investigative reporter John Solomon began writing a series of columns about Hunter Biden and Burisma in The Hill. . A month later, in April 2019, Hunter abandoned his laptop at a repair shop in Delaware, ultimately leading to a series of revelations in October 2020, including information about his business dealings in Ukraine.
The Hunter Burisma material, presented in January 2019 and re-stored on a thumb drive given to Pompeo's aides in May 2019, was apparently ingested with Burisma-related disinformation of foreign origin. This appears to be the earliest known instance of it being taken seriously by members of Hunter Burisma. US intelligence community. It has also been suggested that there is a third east-to-west route for disinformation in 2020, via Giuliani and another FBI informant with ties to Russia and Eastern Europe, Alexander Smirnov. This is different from the known efforts. Mr. Smirnov was indicted last week on charges of lying to the FBI about Hunter Biden. Prosecutors alleged in court filings that Mr. Smirnov had extensive ties to Russian intelligence services.
It's easy to see why Hunter Biden's critics focus on Burisma. The energy company paid Mr. Biden about $600,000 a year during a period that overlapped with his father's term as vice president. It's unclear what the company received in return beyond being able to boast an indirect line to the White House. But nearly five years after leaving his board, Hunter Biden has never been accused of any wrongdoing related to Burisma's activities. Instead, special prosecutor David Weiss indicted Hunter on charges of tax evasion and lying on documents to purchase firearms.
The revelations about Lowry's thumb drive came shortly after Smirnov was indicted in June 2020 for allegedly making false statements about Hunter Biden. Like Smirnov, Rowley's dossier accuses Hunter Biden of involving his father in Burisma's operations and engaging in extensive off-the-books operations. scam. Mr. Smirnov's falsehoods include allegations that Burisma officials paid Joe Biden $5 million in bribes, including an allegation that Burisma officials paid Joe Biden $5 million in bribes, including a live report from a confidential source circulated by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. He was memorialized with an FBI Form 1023 recording the report. The thumb drive incident raises further questions about the ease with which foreign actors can access the highest levels of the U.S. government and pass off trash as legitimate information.
A spokesman for Mr. Pompeo did not respond to repeated requests for comment. There is no evidence to suggest that Secretary of State Pompeo or his aides did anything with the materials after receiving the thumb drive.
A former State Department official who served under the Pompeo administration told BI that it was not uncommon for officials to receive random materials from people they met at social events, and that such materials were not passed on to in-house experts for evaluation. He said there was a process in place for the handover. .
Business Insider reached out Thursday to the Claremont Institute, which is responsible for vetting the gala's guest list, but did not immediately receive a response. Since 2016, the Claremont Institute has moved away from traditional conservative politics and into more extreme territory. The organization awarded the fellowship to Jack Posobiec, a MAGA troublemaker who has used online platforms to spread conspiracy theories and serve as an organizing hub for pushback against DEI initiatives in higher education.
The FBI, Justice Department and a lawyer representing Mr. Bouma did not immediately respond to after-hours requests for comment.
With reporting by Anastasiia Carrier.
