On Monday, a former FBI informant entered a guilty plea to giving federal investigators misleading information on Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden months prior to the 2020 presidential election.
This year, Alexander Smirnov was charged with providing his FBI handler with false information about the Bidens in June 2020. The information claimed that the father and son had received $5 million each from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that hired Hunter Biden, during the Obama administration, when Biden was vice president.
A confidential human source document linked to Smirnov’s claims was cited by numerous House Republicans as the main component of their impeachment investigation into Biden, who denied any misconduct.
After agreeing last week to enter a guilty plea to inducing the creation of a false and fraudulent record in a federal inquiry, Smirnov entered his plea in a California federal court. In addition, he acknowledged receiving over $2 million in undeclared income for the tax years 2020–22 and entered a guilty plea to tax evasion on charges related to a separate indictment that was made public last month.
At Smirnov’s sentencing next month, prosecutors and his lawyers agreed to suggest that the court sentence him to four to six years in jail and a year of supervised release. According to the plea deal, they agreed to pay about $675,000 in restitution.
Smirnov’s time spent in pretrial custody following his February arrest is also credited in the agreement.
Before he made the bribery accusations a month later, Smirnov allegedly sent his handler a slew of texts showing bias toward Biden, who was the likely Democratic presidential contender in May 2020, according to the indictment.
After meeting with Russian intelligence officers in November, prosecutors claimed that Smirnov was “actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections” in an attempt to have him detained pending trial.
A request for response Monday evening was not immediately answered by Smirnov’s lawyer.
In 2010, Smirnov joined the FBI as a confidential human source. Special counsel David Weiss, who had previously looked into Hunter Biden’s weapons and tax allegations, launched the case against him.
Hunter Biden entered a guilty plea to tax charges in September after being found guilty on federal weapons charges in June.Prior to his expected sentencing in the tax case on December 16 and the gun case on December 12, his father granted him a pardon this month.
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