Special counsel David Weiss on Thursday indicted an ex-confidential informant for the FBI who infamously provided derogatory information about Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s involvement in business dealings with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
Alexander Smirnov, 43, was charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record, the Department of Justice announced.
He was taken into custody Wednesday at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas after returning from a trip overseas. He’s slated to make his first court appearance on Thursday afternoon.
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If convicted, Smirnov could face up to 25 years in prison.
The allegations are a massive blow to House Republicans’ attempt to impeach Biden, which relied heavily on accusations—levied by Smirnov—that the president was financially benefiting from his son’s business dealings in Ukraine.
The indictment said Smirnov’s claims made to the FBI were “a fabrication, an amalgam of otherwise unremarkable business meetings and contacts.”
Smirnov allegedly told an FBI agent in 2017 that he spoke with the owner of Burisma and noted that Hunter Biden was a member of the company’s board.
The DOJ claims Smirnov made false statements as he recounted a pair of those conversations—from 2015 or 2016—alleging that Burisma executives told him they’d hired Hunter Biden to protect them from trouble by using the elder Biden as a political shield.
Weiss now alleges that Smirnov made a false claim that the executives paid $5 million to each Biden so Hunter would “take care of all those issues through his dad,” referencing a criminal probe Burisma faced by Ukrainian authorities at the time.
The indictment said the FBI interviewed Smirnov again in September and accused him of lying again about his meetings with Burisma. The DOJ said he even added other inaccuracies to his story that time around.
Also alleged in the indictment was claims that Smirnov repeatedly showed bias against Biden, at one point texting that he was “going to jail.”
“In short, the (Smirnov) transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against (Biden), the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against (Biden) and his candidacy,” the indictment said.
Following the charges being made public, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, called for an end to the impeachment inquiry against Biden, which he said was “based on a lie.”
“In a detailed indictment, Special Counsel David Weiss—who was appointed by former President Donald Trump—has demonstrated how key evidence at the heart of House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry is based on a lie,” a statement from Raskin said, adding, “Special Counsel Weiss’s investigation is just the most recent to debunk the Ukraine-Burisma conspiracy theory at the heart of this fraudulent impeachment inquiry.
“It is an undeniable fact that Republicans’ allegations against President Biden have always been a tissue of lies built on conspiracy theories, and I formally call on Speaker Johnson, Chairman Comer, and House Republicans to stop promoting this nonsense and end their doomed impeachment inquiry.”
