Alexander Smirnov’s claims played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family
In Los Angeles, a former FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, has pleaded guilty to charges related to a fake bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. This scheme gained prominence during the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.
Smirnov pleaded guilty to a felony charge concerning the false story and also faces a tax evasion charge from a separate indictment, alleging that he hid millions of dollars of income.
An attorney for Smirnov declined to comment after the hearing in Los Angeles federal court.
Prosecutors and the defense have agreed to recommend a sentence of between four and six years in prison when he’s sentenced next month.
Since his arrest in February, Smirnov has been in custody, and he will receive credit for this time served. The charges against him revolve around allegations that he wrongly claimed to his FBI handler that executives from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, had paid $5 million each to President Biden and Hunter Biden in 2015.
Smirnov had been an informant for more than a decade when he made the explosive allegations about the Bidens in June 2020, after “expressing bias” about Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, prosecutors said.
But Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Burisma starting in 2017, according to court documents. An FBI field office investigated the allegations and recommended the case be closed in August 2020, according to charging documents.
No evidence has emerged that Joe Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes as president or in his previous office as vice president.
While Smirnov’s identity wasn’t publicly known before the indictment, his claims played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. Before Smirnov’s arrest, Republicans had demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if they were true.
During a September 2023 conversation with investigators, Smirnov also claimed the Russians probably had recordings of Hunter Biden because a hotel in Ukraine’s capital where he had stayed was “wired” and under their control — information he said was passed along to him by four high-level Russian officials.
But Hunter Biden had never traveled to Ukraine, according to Smirnov’s indictment.
Smirnov claimed to have contacts with Russian intelligence-affiliated officials, and told authorities after his arrest this year that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.
The case against Smirnov was brought by special counsel David Weiss, who also prosecuted Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges. Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced this month after being convicted at a trial in the gun case and pleading guilty to federal charges in the tax case. But he was pardoned this month by his father, who said he believed “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
