As the Trump administration continues to run roughshod over basic civil liberties protections and the rule of law, it’s also determined to keep manipulating legal proceedings to protect its cronies, operatives, and allies. One especially curious case in point is the Trump Justice Department’s decision to review the conviction of Alexander Smirnov, the business figure and FBI informant with alleged ties to Russian intelligence. Smirnov spun a series of fictional allegations to his FBI handlers about Hunter Biden’s time at Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and supposed corrupt ties to former president Joe Biden. Smirnov’s bogus narrative was the centerpiece of the GOP House inquiry into a potential Biden impeachment.

Last year, Smirnov pleaded guilty to multiple federal charges—including making a false statement about the Bidens—and was sentenced to six years in prison, so it’s difficult to discern, based on the new DOJ filing, what might cast fresh doubt on his conviction. (The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment on this piece; Smirnov’s lawyer declined to comment.)

The intrigue here deepens in view of continued revelations about Smirnov’s dealings with Trump’s business empire. Trump’s own personal business associates paid Smirnov under unclear circumstances via a mysterious American firm in 2020—the same year he was providing false statements about the Bidens to the FBI. But Smirnov had other, unreported ties to Donald Trump and his businesses, via a convoluted group of linked companies, one of which came close to building a Trump-branded social media platform, like the firm that later became known as Truth Social, even though Smirnov reportedly had little direct involvement in the plan.

Around the same time that Smirnov was lying to the FBI, a company Smirnov had advised and still owned shares in, Skylab Apps, was pitching Donald Trump and his advisers on a business deal for a new social media platform called FreeSpace. Smirnov’s Skylab associates traveled to Mar-a-Lago twice that year, as Trump narrowed down the bidders on the platform that would eventually become Truth Social to two contenders: Skylab’s FreeSpace and the eventual winner, Truth Social (the Truth Social platform, which launched in 2022, was taken over by the Trump Media & Technology group two years later, reporting losses of more than $327 million for the first quarter of 2024).

Despite its losing bid on a marquee property in the right-wing social mediasphere, a former executive of FreeSpace has said that some of its app infrastructure was incorporated into Truth Social. And several principals of the company went on to lead a relaunch of the ill-fated right-wing social media company Parler.

Smirnov had unsuccessfully tried to help Skylab go public years before, via a merger with another company he was affiliated with, according to multiple former employees. Smirnov subsequently owned part of Skylab through a shell company that was originally registered in his partner’s son’s name. The paperwork for his ownership stake was later refiled under his own name, according to SEC and corporate filings.

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Smirnov was involved with Skylab as an adviser and as someone who looked for investors for the company as far back as 2017, multiple former Skylab employees and associates told The Nation. Smirnov also tried to interest US investors in crypto schemes and foreign energy projects; it was indeed a failed effort to cut a deal with the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, which retained Hunter Biden on its board of directors, that evidently plunged Smirnov into his side gig as a bogus source of anti-Biden agitprop.

In the fall of 2020, Skylab Apps partnered with two Trumpworld figures and began preparing to launch an app called FreeSpace Social. The app was rushed to completion in January 2021, the founders said, after Twitter banned right-wing accounts in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

After a checkered career in business leading from Soviet Ukraine to Israel, Smirnov emigrated to the United States in 2006. By 2010, he had moved to Laguna Hills, California, with his partner, Diana Levanyruk, and was working as an FBI informant, according to his 2024 indictment, providing information on securities and financial fraud. His longtime associate Boris Nayflish (who was previously married to Levanyruk), incorporated an investment company in Florida called Pandora Venture Capital Corp in 2014.

Pandora was acquired by WRIT Media Group, a “diversified media and software California company” in 2018. Smirnov was the “deal guy” for WRIT, he told a former associate in 2017, and had access to the company’s shareholder lists. WRIT was the subject of at least two reports around this time by the privately backed Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for suspected market manipulation schemes. (The inquiries were eventually dropped.)

During his West Coast sojourn, Smirnov met Dean Grey, a former multilevel marketing company guru. Smirnov and Grey went on to collaborate on plans to take Grey’s “white-label app” company public—a white label app is a pre-built social media app that can be rebranded or customized for companies.

Smirnov and Grey met in a coffee shop one day in the Los Angeles area, a former employee said. In 2017, Smirnov was helping to put together an initial public offering for Grey’s white label app company, Skylab Apps Inc. By this time, Smirnov’s associate’s Florida company, Pandora, had been acquired by WRIT Media; it then merged with Skylab Apps to form SkyLab USA. Smirnov’s associate Nayflish was listed as president of SkyLab USA in the company’s 2017 SEC documents; he also called himself Skylab’s chief technology officer on his LinkedIn account.

Skylab got briefly absorbed in a 2019 hostile takeover bid with a Trump-connected firm called Economic Transformation Technologies (ETT). After Grey preserved Skylab from the merger, Smirnov continued advising him, a source with knowledge of the company told The Nation.

The Guardian reported in March that two Trump business associates were involved in ETT, which engineered a $600,000 payment to Smirnov highlighted by federal prosecutors.

While trying to help Skylab go public, Smirnov brought potential investors to meetings with Grey, according to a former Skylab employee who requested anonymity. These backers were mostly Ukrainian businessmen in the Los Angeles area, according to the source. Skylab employees referred to these figures as “the Russians,” the former employee said; several of them owned adult clubs in and around LA.

“Dean almost seemed afraid of Alex,” the source recalls. “One day Alex showed up and demanded Dean let him borrow his Rolls Royce Phantom for a week, and Dean just handed him the keys.”

Grey also bragged about Smirnov’s status as an FBI informant, several former employees told The Nation.

“‘Alex Smirnov is protected by the FBI,’ is what we’d always hear him say,” another former employee who requested anonymity said. 

In the fall of 2020, Grey met Jaco Booyens and Jonathan Willis after moving SkyLab to an office complex called The Star in Frisco, Texas, where Booyens also had an office, according to Willis’s later account in multiple podcast appearances. Grey and Willis began discussing the idea of launching a “Facebook competitor” with Booyens around that time, according to multiple later interviews both men did.

Willis’s family owns a commercial development firm in Mesa, Arizona. He told ProPublica in 2016 that he met Donald Trump Jr. “through a mutual connection at Turning Point USA ”and worked on the 2016 Trump campaign. The two also discussed possible real estate expansion plans the Trump Organization was eyeing in Las Vegas, he said at the time. Willis was also a major donor to Turning Point USA and was on the group’s advisory board from 2017 until 2019.

Booyens is a right-wing influencer who describes himself as an “abolitionist fighting human trafficking, lover of Jesus, international speaker, filmmaker & watchman warrior.” A 2018 ProPublica investigation found that Donald Trump Jr. was an investor in an indoor lettuce farming business that Booyens was a principal in.

In December 2020, Grey asked Willis to become president of SkyLab, and in January 2021 they decided to launch FreeSpace Social “in a week,” as a “direct result of the conservative purge,” Willis said at a 2022 conference.

In a February 2021 interview with podcaster Stew Peters, Booyens explained: “For the last four years, behind the scenes, a very, very competent team has been working…. We expedited the launch because of what happened January 6, with the whole massive deplatforming.”

Skylab Apps was “founded and funded by conservatives,” according to The Wall Street Journal’s review of a May 2021 investor presentation. The company pitched its line of apps to a who’s-who roster of conservative companies and groups, including Moms for America, the American First Policy Institute and Ziklag, a network of wealthy Christian donors.

The FreeSpace app hit the AppStore on February 1, 2021, built quickly using SkyLab’s existing technology, according to interviews and podcasts featuring Willis and Booyens.

“Three weeks later, we get a call from Dan Scavino,” Willis recalled, referencing the present Trump deputy chief of staff who served as the administration’s director of social media during Trump’s first term. “So we were called down to Mar-a-Lago,” where Willis and others met with Scavino for 90 minutes, he said at a 2022 event hosted by a right-wing group called United Patriots AZ.

“Two weeks after that, we’re called back, and we met with the president, and his entire team and the CEO of Rumble was there,” Willis said of his second visit to Mar-a-Lago. Willis cautioned that specifics of the arrangement with Trump’s social media team are covered by a nondisclosure agreement, but claimed that “our company advised a lot of the architecture and structure of Truth Social.”

In addition to the FreeSpace app that went live on the App Store, Skylab also mocked up an app called TMG, seemingly referring to Trump Media Group (which would later be renamed the Trump Media & Technology Group). FreeSpace’s mockup featured a blue-and-white T logo that looks similar to the current Truth Social logo. A Skylab TMG demo profile was created for Truth Social founder Wes Moss, indicating some potential crossover with the eventual Truth Social platform.

In March 2021, Axios reported, “Among the social networking apps the former president and his digital adviser Dan Scavino have homed in on is a relatively unknown platform called FreeSpace,” citing sources familiar with the private discussion.

An investor presentation reviewed by The Wall Street Journal in May 2021 said SkyLab was trying to raise $25 million from friends and family at a valuation of about $100 million. The paper reported that “another possibility would be for [Trump] to buy or lease code from Skylab to create his own social-media network, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Around this time, Skylab created a demo app for Texas-based Entoro Securities, where Patrick Francis Orlando was a managing director in 2020 and 2021, according to a previous version of his LinkedIn profile (he has since deleted his Entoro tenure).

Orlando formed Digital World Acquisition Company (DWAC), the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that orchestrated the IPO for Trump Media & Technology, in December 2020. How Orlando met the FreeSpace founders is unclear; there is likewise no clear account of whether he was made aware of the company’s plans for a Trump app. Orlando was later sued by the SEC, which alleged that Orlando had Trump Media as a target company for his SPAC before DWAC went public, which is a violation of federal securities law. DWAC announced Trump Media as its target company in October 2021, but the SEC investigation alleged that Orlando was in talks with prospective investors about Trump’s company as far back as June 2021. Orlando’s SEC case is ongoing.

Although Smirnov continued to hold shares in Skylab Apps, he did not have specific knowledge of FreeSpace, nor did he advise Skylab Apps on FreeSpace, a source with knowledge of the company told The Nation. Meanwhile, several of the principals involved in FreeSpace and Skylab Apps are spearheading an effort to revive the defunct right-wing social media app Parler, dubbed the “Parler 3.0” relaunch.

When the DOJ indicted Smirnov last year, prosecutors detailed his ties to Russian intelligence officers and attendance at parties thrown on a mega yacht owned by a Russian oligarch in the Middle East. Prosecutors at the time argued that those ties, along with Smirnov’s access to millions of dollars, meant Smirnov was a flight risk and required pretrial detention. Last week, however, the DOJ under Trump filed a joint motion with Smirnov’s attorneys asking for his release pending his appeal of his sentence. In the filing, the DOJ wrote, “The United States intends to review the government’s theory of the case underlying Defendant’s criminal conviction.”

It’s a safe bet none of the tangled saga of Alexander Smirnov’s time in the world of MAGA financiers will play much of a role in the pending DOJ review of his case. If anything, such ties might prove exculpatory; Kash Patel, the Trump-appointed head of the FBI, formerly sat on the board of the Trump Media & Technology Group, and scored a windfall of $800,000 in Truth Social stock just prior to his Senate confirmation hearings. That’s in addition to his series of Trump-adulating children’s books, and his side hustle touting MAGA gear under his title-says-it-all K$H apparel line. In other words, the federal law-enforcement agency that reportedly retained Smirnov as a sketchy informant might now be said to be sharing his business model.