- Special prosecutor David Weiss accused Alexander Smirnov of lying about Biden after he became a presidential candidate.
- Smirnov was arrested Thursday at the Las Vegas airport.
- The charges undermine Republican claims that Biden benefits financially from his son’s business dealings in Ukraine.
Special counsel David Weiss accused a former FBI informant of lying about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden accepting $5 million in bribes from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Alexander Smirnov, 43, is accused of making a false statement and creating a false record of statements he made to the FBI in 2020 and, if convicted, faces a maximum of 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 Thursday afternoon.
The charges against Smirnov could undermine Republican allegations of bribery and claims that Biden was benefiting financially from his son’s business dealings in Ukraine.
Special counsel David Weiss accused a former FBI informant of lying about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden accepting a $5 million bribe from Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
According to court documents, Smirnov told the FBI in March 2017 that he had a phone call with Burisma’s owner about energy companies’ interest in acquiring a business in the United States.
In recounting the conversation, Smirnov told the FBI that someone referred to him as “Businessman 1′ was on the board of Burisma and was also the son of an individual called ‘Public Official 1’. While the people in the indictment are not named, they are reported to be Hunter Biden and President Biden.
Three years later, in June 2020, the prosecution alleges Smirnov provided false information about Biden and Hunter after Biden became a presidential candidate.
At that time, Smirnov reported two meetings around 2015 and/or 2016.
Smirnov alleges falsely claimed that during meetings, executives associated with Burisma admitted to him that they hired Hunter to ‘protect us, through his father, from all kinds of problems,’ and then had specifically paid $5 million each to Biden and Hunter while Biden was still in office so Hunter would ‘take care of all those matters through his father,’ referring to a criminal investigation being carried out by Ukraine’s then-prosecutor general into Burisma.
According to the indictment, the facts that Smirnov reported in 2020 were a fabrication.
The charges against Smirnov undermine Republican bribery allegations and claim that Biden was benefiting financially from his son’s business dealings in Ukraine.
The indictment alleges, in fact, 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 in American politics and after the Ukraine’s attorney general was fired in February 2016.
The indictment alleges that Smirnov turned his routine business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against Biden after expressing bias against Biden and his presidential bid.
When Smirnov was interviewed by the FBI in September 2023, the prosecution alleges that he repeated some of his false claims, changed his story with other claims, and “promoted a new false narrative after saying he met with Russian officials.”
House Republicans had seized on the FBI document alleging the $5 million bribe as part of their investigation into the president. The accusation undermines that key component in his case.