A former FBI informant named Alexander Smirnov has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges after being accused of making false claims about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s alleged business dealings with a Ukrainian energy company. The charges were revealed in a court filing on Thursday, December 12.
Smirnov, who worked as a confidential informant for the FBI for years, reached a deal with Special Counsel David Weiss, the prosecutor in charge of Hunter Biden’s investigation. Hunter Biden, who was recently pardoned by his father for federal gun and tax charges, was at the center of the investigation.
Smirnov was arrested earlier this year after a grand jury indicted him. The charges came after he falsely told the FBI in 2020 that Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, paid bribes to Joe Biden when he was vice president, and to Hunter Biden, who served on Burisma’s board. Smirnov’s false claims became part of the FBI’s investigation into the Bidens.
Alongside this, Smirnov is also facing charges for tax evasion. He’s accused of hiding over two million dollars in income from 2020 to 2022. As part of the plea deal, Smirnov will admit to making false statements during a federal investigation and will also plead guilty to three counts of tax evasion. He could face up to six years in prison, followed by one year of supervised release, and be required to pay over $675,000 in restitution.
Smirnov’s role as an informant for the FBI had him feeding information into various investigations from 2010 to 2020. Despite being repeatedly warned to provide truthful information, Smirnov supplied false claims about Joe and Hunter Biden, including accusations that they took bribes from Burisma.
These claims, recorded by the FBI, were passed around in political circles and eventually made their way to Republican lawmakers, who used them to criticize the Bidens. Smirnov had told the FBI that, in 2015 and 2016, Burisma executives said they hired Hunter Biden to “protect” the company through his father’s influence, claiming that they paid the Bidens millions of dollars for this “protection.”
However, investigators have found that Smirnov’s claims are misleading. His interactions with Burisma came after the events he described, during a time when Joe Biden no longer had any influence over Ukraine’s political matters. Prosecutors argue that Smirnov created these false allegations after becoming biased against Joe Biden during the presidential campaign.
Smirnov’s accusations were part of the larger narrative used by House Republicans in their impeachment inquiry against President Biden.
