WASHINGTON (AP) – A former FBI informant pled guilty yesterday to lying about a phony bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.
Alexander Smirnov was expected to make the plea in Los Angeles to a felony charge in connection with the bogus story, along with a tax evasion charge stemming from a separate indictment accusing him of concealing millions of dollars of income, according to court papers.
Smirnov has been behind bars since his arrest in February on charges that he told his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid President Biden and Hunter Biden USD5 million each around 2015.
Prosecutors and the defense have agreed to recommend a sentence of between four and six years in prison, according to the plea agreement.
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 in his current role or previous office as vice president. While his identity wasn’t publicly known before the indictment, Smirnov’s 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 likely 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 travelled to Ukraine, according to Smirnov’s indictment.
Smirnov claimed to have contacts with intelligence-affiliated officials, and told authorities after his arrest earlier this year that some officials associated with intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.
