Former FBI informant accused of lying about Hunter and Joe Biden receiving $5 million in bribes from Burisma, faces 25 years in prison
- Special counsel David Weiss accused Alexander Smirnov of lying about Biden after he became a presidential candidate
- Smirnov was arrested at Las Vegas airport on Thursday
- The allegations undermine Republican claims that Biden benefited financially from his son’s business dealings in Ukraine
Special counsel David Weiss has accused a former FBI informant of lying about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden taking $5 million in bribes from Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Alexander Smirnov, 43, is charged with making a false statement and creating a false record for statements he made to the FBI in 2020. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison.
Smirnov was arrested Thursday afternoon at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas after arriving in the United States from abroad and appeared in federal court in Nevada on Thursday afternoon.
The charges against Smirnov could undermine Republican accusations of bribery and claims that Biden benefited financially from his son’s business dealings in Ukraine.
Special counsel David Weiss has accused a former FBI informant of lying about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden taking $5 million in bribes from Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
According to court documents, Smirnov told the FBI in March 2017 that he had had a phone call with the owner of Burisma about energy companies’ interest in acquiring a company in the United States.
In his account of the conversation, Smirnov told the FBI that someone “Entrepreneur 1′ was on the board of Burisma and was also the son of an individual referred to as ‘Government Official 1’. Although the individuals are not named in the indictment, they are reportedly Hunter Biden and President Biden.
Three years later, in June 2020, the indictment alleges Smirnov provided false information about Biden and Hunter after Biden became a presidential candidate.
At the time, Smirnov reported two meetings around 2015 and/or 2016.
It claims Smirnov falsely claimed that executives associated with Burisma admitted to him during the meetings that they had hired Hunter to “protect us, through his father, from all kinds of trouble,” and later specifically paid Biden and Hunter $5 million each while Biden that was. still in office, so Hunter would “handle all these issues through his father,” referring to a criminal investigation conducted by the then Ukrainian Attorney General into Burisma.
According to the indictment, the events Smirnov reported in 2020 were a fabrication.
The charges against Smirnov undermine Republicans’ bribery allegations and allege that Biden benefited financially from his son’s business dealings in Ukraine.
The indictment alleges that Smirnov had contact with Burisma executives in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden administration and after the then-Ukrainian attorney general was fired in February 2016 when Biden had “no ability to influence U.S. policy and after the Ukrainian Prosecutor General was dismissed in February 2016.’
The indictment alleges that Smirnov turned his routine business dealings with Burisma into bribery charges against Biden in 2017 and later after expressing bias against Biden and his presidential candidacy.
When Smirnov was interviewed by the FBI in September 2023, the indictment alleges that he repeated some of his false claims, changed his story with other claims and “promoted a new false story after saying he had met with Russian officials.”
House Republicans had seized the FBI document alleging the $5 million bribe as part of their investigation into the president. The indictment undermines that important part of their case.