WASHINGTON — An FBI informant has been accused of lying to authorities about a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company, a claim at the center of the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.
Alexander Smirnov falsely reported in June 2020 that executives linked to Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016, prosecutors said. An executive claimed to have hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his father, from all sorts of trouble,” prosecutors said.
Smirnov had only routine business dealings with the company in 2017 and made the bribery allegations after “expressing bias” against Joe Biden, who was then a presidential candidate, prosecutors said in court documents.
Smirnov, 43, appeared briefly in court in Las Vegas on Thursday after being charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious dossier. He has not entered a plea. The judge ordered the courtroom cleared after federal public defender Margaret Wightman Lambrose requested a closed hearing for arguments about sealing court documents. She declined to comment on the case.
The informant’s claims have been central to Republican efforts in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spur what is now a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. An attorney for Hunter Biden, who is expected to make a statement later this month, said the charges show the investigation is “based on unfair, implausible allegations and witnesses.”
Prosecutors say Smirnov had contact with Burisma executives, but it was routine and actually took place in 2017, after President Barack Obama and Biden, his vice president, left office — when Biden would have had no opportunity to change U.S. policy to influence .
Smirnov “transformed his routine and unusual business dealings with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against Public Official 1, the presumptive candidate of one of the two major political parties for the presidency, after expressing bias against Public Official 1 and his candidacy.” complaint said.
He repeated some of the false claims when interviewed by FBI agents in September 2023 and changed his story about others and “promoted a new false story after saying he met with Russian officials,” prosecutors said.
If convicted, he faces a maximum prison sentence of 25 years.
The indictment was filed by Justice Department Special Counsel David Weiss, who has separately charged Hunter Biden with firearms and tax violations.
Burisma’s allegations became a flashpoint in Congress as Republicans investigating President Joe Biden and his family demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the allegations. They acknowledged that they could not confirm whether the allegations were true.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., had subpoenaed the FBI last year for the so-called FD-1023 document as Republicans deepened their investigation into Biden and his son Hunter ahead of the 2024 presidential election .
Along with Comer, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa released an unclassified document that Republicans at the time claimed was important in their investigation of Hunter Biden. It added to information widely broadcast during Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial about Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to dig up dirt on the Bidens ahead of the 2020 election. The White House said at the time that the claims had been debunked for years.
The impeachment inquiry into Biden over his son’s business dealings has stalled in the House of Representatives, but the panel continues its work.
Hunter Biden is expected to appear before the committee later this month. His lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said he had long warned that the investigation was based on “lies told by people with political agendas, not facts.” We were right and the air is out of their balloon.”
A judge set a Feb. 20 detention hearing for Smirnov, who was arrested at Las Vegas airport after arriving in the U.S. from abroad.
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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.