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Special Counsel Charges FBI Source With Biden Bribery Lies
(Bloomberg) -- A Justice Department special counsel tasked with investigating Hunter Biden has charged a Los Angeles man with lying to the FBI about Biden and his father’s connection to Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
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Alexander Smirnov, a longtime confidential informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was charged in an indictment made public on Thursday and signed by US Special Counsel David Weiss.
Smirnov allegedly told his FBI handler in 2020 that Burisma executives had revealed to him in 2015 and 2016 that they had hired Hunter to obtain the protection of Joe Biden, then the vice president, and had paid millions in bribes to both Bidens.
According to Weiss, Smirnov’s claims were fabrications, and he embellished routine contacts he had with Burisma executives in 2017, after Biden was already out of office.
Republicans, who are conducting impeachment hearings into Joe Biden based on allegations that he benefitted financially from his son’s business arrangements, have long tried to suggest that the Bidens are corrupt. The White House and leading Democrats have denied wrongdoing by the president.
With the Smirnov indictment potentially undermining the GOP’s efforts, partisan bickering among members of the House Oversight Committee escalated Thursday on the social media platform X.
The indictment didn’t name the Bidens, but the descriptions of “Public Official 1” and “Businessperson 1” clearly matched the father and son.
Smirnov, who started working as an informant for the FBI in 2010, allegedly relayed to his handler a conversation in which he claimed Burisma’s owner said the company hired Hunter Biden “to protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.” According to the indictment, Smirnov also claimed the owner said each of the Bidens was paid $5 million to “take care of all those issues.”
“The defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations” against Joe Biden. When he spoke to his handler in 2020, Smirnov also allegedly expressed bias against Biden’s candidacy for the presidency.
Weiss, who had been investigating Hunter Biden as the Donald Trump-appointed US attorney for Delaware, was made a special counsel in August 2023. When FBI agents interviewed Smirnov in 2023 as part of Weiss’ investigation, he repeated some of his fabricated claims, according to the indictment.
Hunter Biden has been charged by Weiss with both failing to pay income tax on millions of dollars in income, including from Burisma, and for lying to obtain a firearms permit. He’s pleaded not guilty to both charges.
(Updates with congressional reaction.)
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