WASHINGTON — A confidential FBI source has been charged with two counts of lying to the bureau about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign.
According to the Ministry of Justice, 43-year-old Alexander Smirnov, who dislikes President Joe Biden, was arrested in Las Vegas after returning from a trip abroad. The case arose as a result of an investigation led by a special prosecutor David Weiss, who is also leading the case against Hunter Biden. Weiss was appointed by former President Donald Trump as Delaware’s attorney general.
37 pages indictment alleges that Smirnov has been an FBI informant since 2010 and “provided false and derogatory information to the FBI” about both Bidens after Joe Biden ran for president in 2020.
Smirnov allegedly lied to the FBI that officials at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, where Hunter Biden worked, told him they hired Hunter Biden because he would “keep us out of any trouble through his father.” Smirnov allegedly told the FBI — again falsely — that Burisma officials had paid him $5 million to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, and that it would take investigators 10 years to find the illegal payments to Joe Biden.
A source familiar with the matter told NBC News that Hunter Biden does not know the accused person and does not believe he has ever met him.
“As alleged herein, the events Defendant first reported to Handler in June 2020 were fictitious. In truth and reality, Defendant contacted executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration, and thereafter. Ukraine’s the chief prosecutor was fired in February 2016, in other words, then [Joe Biden] There was no opportunity to influence US policy and when the Attorney General was no longer in office. In short, in 2017, the Defendant turned its ordinary and extraordinary business relations with Burisma into bribery allegations against him. [Joe Biden]after expressing a bias against the presumptive presidential candidate of one of the two major political parties [Joe Biden] and his candidacy”.
The indictment states that Smirnov “repeated some of his false claims” after being interviewed by FBI special agents in September 2023, while also “changing his story on other claims and creating a new false narrative after he said he met with a Russian.” officials”.
In a May 2020 message to the head of the FBI, Smirnov wrote that Joe Biden would “go to jail” and suggested he knew some of the allegations would “be in the news soon.”
The indictment alleges that Smirnov was told at least seven times that he had to testify about the information he gave to the FBI, and that the administrator was admonished at least 21 times to tell the truth to the bureau.