Special counsel charges former FBI informant with falsely claiming Burisma bribed the Bidens

The prosecutor who charged Hunter Biden with tax fraud and gun crimes has indicted a former FBI informant on charges of fraudulently claiming President Biden and his son received bribes from Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.

Special counsel David C. Weiss announced Thursday he is charging Alexander Smirnov with two counts of lying to the FBI about Hunter Biden and his father.

Mr. Smirnov, 43, was arrested Thursday at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas upon return from a foreign trip. He faces up to 25 years in prison on the charges.

Prosecutors say the longtime confidential human source for the FBI “provided false and derogatory information,” to the bureau.

Mr. Smirnov claimed Burisma executives told him in 2015 and 2016 that they paid both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden $5 million each to protect the company from “all kinds of problems,” and help shake off a corruption probe by Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

Through email evidence, travel records and witness testimony, the indictment described how Mr. Smirnov could not have met with Burisma officials when he claimed, undermining his entire bribery accusation against the Bidens.

Mr. Smirnov’s bombshell bribery claim shook up an ongoing probe into whether the president participated in his son’s lucrative business deals, but it has not played a central role in the investigation.

Instead, lawmakers now conducting an impeachment inquiry into Mr. Biden have focused on witness testimony from Hunter Biden’s former business partners as well as bank records in their efforts to show Mr. Biden played a role in helping his family secure more than $20 million in foreign business deals.

Ex-business partners recounted how Mr. Biden would stop by or phone into his son’s business meetings and that the deals were leveraged on Joe Biden’s name.

“To be clear, the impeachment inquiry is not reliant on [Mr. Smirnov]. It is based on a large record of evidence, including bank records and witness testimony, revealing that Joe Biden knew of and participated in his family’s business dealings,” Rep. James Comer, Kentucky Republican and House Oversight and Accountability Committee chairman, said in a statement provided to The Washington Times.

Democrats, who say the GOP probe of Mr. Biden is baseless and politically motivated have long attacked Mr. Smirnov’s veracity.

The indictment confirms their suspicions and details how Mr. Smirnov purportedly fabricated the timing of the meetings with Burisma officials.

Those meetings did not occur while Mr. Biden was vice president. They happened in the spring of 2017, which the indictment points out is after Mr. Biden’s term as vice president ended and after Mr. Shokin was pushed out of the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office.

The indictment includes text messages from Mr. Smirnov that appear to show his political opposition to Mr. Biden.

“The Defendant’s story to the FBI was a fabrication, an amalgam of otherwise unremarkable business meetings and contacts that had actually occurred, but at a later date than he claimed and for the purpose of pitching Burisma on the Defendant’s services and products, not for discussing bribes to [Mr. Biden] when he was in office,” the indictment states.

The defendant, according to the indictment, lied again when he told investigators to look into Hunter Biden’s trips to Kyiv, where, he claimed, the president’s son may have been recorded in a hotel called the Premier Palace.

The hotel, he said, is “wired” and under the control of the Russians. He said Hunter Biden had frequented the hotel and made telephone calls likely recorded by Kremlin spies.

Mr. Smirnov also told investigators he is involved in “negotiations over ending the war” between Ukraine and Russia.

Hunter Biden, the prosecutor said, has never traveled to Ukraine despite serving on the board of Burisma. The Burisma board meetings took place outside of the country, prosecutors said in the indictment.

In separate, unrelated cases, Mr. Weiss has charged Hunter Biden with three felonies, related to purchasing a gun while a drug addict and with three felonies and six misdemeanors involving nonpayment of taxes and falsification of tax forms.