An FBI informant has been charged with lying to his handler about ties between President Biden, his son Hunter, and the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
The informant, identified as 41-year-old Alexander Smirnov, is accused of lying to FBI agents when he told them that executives associated with Burisma paid $5 million each between 2015 and 2016. The allegation, which was made in June 2020, became a central point of interest in the House impeachment inquiry into President Biden this past summer.
House investigators acknowledged that the allegations were not yet proven, however.
Smirnov told the bureau that a Burisma executive boasted about offering Hunter Biden a seat on the company’s board to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems,” prosecutors with Weiss’ office said. The information was provided to the FBI after President Biden had all but locked down the Democratic nominee for president, prosecutors said.
Smirnov, 43, was charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record. He was arrested in Las Vegas on Wednesday shortly after arriving from an overseas trip and is expected to make an initial court appearance this week.
Prosecutors have charged that Smirnov had only spoken with Burisma executives in 2017, when Joe Biden was no longer serving as vice president. “In other words, when [Joe Biden] had no ability to influence US policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office,” the indictment stated.
Prosecutors further alleged that Smirnov “transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contact with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden],” after previously expressing his opposition to Biden’s candidacy.
When questioned by FBI agents in 2023, Smirnov allegedly changed certain aspects of his story, investigators have claimed.
Weiss previously headed up the investigation into Hunter Biden’s conduct as a U.S. attorney in Delaware. He was later tapped as a special counsel to investigate the case by Attorney General Merrick Garland last year.
Weiss has separately charged Hunter Biden with a number of tax-related and gun violations.