by The special counsel investigating Hunter Biden accused a former FBI informant of fabricating claims that President Biden and his son solicited bribes of $5 million each from a Ukrainian company, a blow to Republicans who cited the allegations. in his attempt to remove the president.
Longtime whistleblower Alexander Smirnov, 43, is accused of falsely telling the FBI that Hunter Biden, then a paid board member of energy giant Burisma, demanded the money to protect the company from a prosecutor’s investigation. general of the country at that time.
The explosive story, which appeared to support baseless Republican claims of a “Biden crime family,” turned out to be a blatant lie, according to a 37-page indictment unsealed Thursday night in federal court in California, filed by special prosecutor David C. Weiss.
Smirnov’s motivation for lying, prosecutors wrote, appears to have been political. During the 2020 campaign, he sent his FBI handler “a series of messages expressing bias” against Joseph R. Biden Jr., including texts filled with typos and spelling errors, boasting that he had information that would land him in jail. .
Republicans pressured the FBI to release internal reports after learning of Smirnov’s claims. In May of last year, Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, threatened to hold the office’s director, Christopher A. Wray, in contempt if he did not reveal some details.
In July, after Wray complied, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, released a copy of an FBI record that included the false allegation without naming Smirnov or questioning its veracity.
He then described Mr. Smirnov’s claims as “very significant allegations from a reliable FBI informant implicating then-Vice President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme.”
Comer, in a statement released after the charges against Smirnov became public, took no responsibility for spreading a claim that prosecutors suggested was a smear intended to harm Biden politically.
Instead, he blamed bureau officials for privately telling the committee that their “source was credible and reliable, had worked with the FBI for more than a decade and had received six-figure payments.”
But FBI officials did not appear to think much of Smirnov’s accusations from the beginning and asked him to provide travel receipts to prove that he attended the meetings cited in his report. In 2020, they concluded that his claims did not merit continued investigation and communicated that decision to senior Trump administration officials at the Justice Department, prosecutors wrote.
Smirnov now faces two charges of making false statements and obstructing the government’s lengthy investigation into the president’s troubled son. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.
The indictment did not say whether Smirnov was a U.S. citizen or specify his country of origin, only that he is a globe-trotting, Russian-speaking businessman who became an FBI informant in 2010.
He was arrested in Las Vegas on Wednesday after disembarking from an international flight and detained pending a hearing on Tuesday.
In 2015 or 2016, Hunter Biden promised to protect the company “through his father, from all kinds of problems,” Smirnov falsely claimed to his office manager in 2020, according to Weiss, who accused the president’s son twice. last year on tax and gun charges.
This claim was easily refuted, prosecutors said: Smirnov was only in contact with Burisma executives in 2017, after Biden left office, when he “had no ability to influence American policy.”
Smirnov told FBI investigators that he had seen footage of Hunter Biden entering a hotel in kyiv, Ukraine, that was “wired” by the Russians, suggesting that Russia may have recorded phone calls made by Biden from the hotel. according to the accusation.
But Biden had never been to Ukraine, much less to that hotel, prosecutors wrote.
Smirnov is accused of exaggerating his “routine and extraordinary business contacts with Burisma” into “bribery allegations” against the president, identified in the filing as “Public Official 1.”
He repeated some of his fabricated claims when interviewed by FBI agents in September 2023, “changed his story regarding other of his claims, and promoted a new false narrative after saying he met with Russian officials,” according to the indictment.
It was unclear who was representing Smirnov in the case.
The president’s son still faces gun charges in Delaware and tax charges in California. But his lawyers said the accusation against Smirnov was proof that he was the target of a mendacious and politically motivated smear campaign.
“For months, we have warned that Republicans have built their conspiracies about Hunter and his family on lies told by people with political agendas, not facts,” Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s attorney, said in a statement. “We were right and the balloon ran out of air.”
Lucas Broadwater and Kenneth P. Vogel contributed with reports.
