FBI informant to plead guilty to lying about Biden bribes

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A former FBI informant agreed to plead guilty to lying to his handler in 2020 about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden receiving $5 million in bribes each from a Ukrainian energy company.

Alexander Smirnov admitted to causing the creation of a false and fictitious record in a federal investigation as well as to three counts of tax evasion, according to his plea agreement filed Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles.

The misinformation provided by Smirnov, who had extensive contacts with Russian intelligence officials, was frequently used by Republican lawmakers and pundits to discredit the Biden administration.

Attorneys with the Office of Special Counsel David Weiss agreed with Smirnov that he should be sentenced to between two and six years in prison and pay $675,502 in restitution, according to the plea deal. His actual sentence will be decided by the judge who isn’t bound by the the agreement.

Authorities arrested Smirnov earlier this year in Las Vegas, where he lives, after he returned from an overseas trip. He has been in jail since February when prosecutors persuaded the judge that he was a flight risk because of extensive and recent contacts with foreign intelligence services and especially with Russian officials. He also failed, prosecutors said, to disclose when he was interviewed by pretrial services in Las Vegas that he had access to about $6 million in liquid funds.

Prosecutors say Smirnov told his FBI handler in 2020, after Joe Biden had become the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, that a Ukrainian energy conglomerate paid both Joe and Hunter Biden a $5 million bribe when Joe Biden was vice president under Barack Obama in exchange for their help resolving a domestic investigation of the company. That turned out to be made-up story to influence the presidential election.

Moreover, in 2023 Smirnov again tried to get the FBI to look in purported visits of Hunter Biden to a Kyiv hotel that was spying hub for Russian intelligence. This too was a lie, according to the prosecution, because Hunter Biden has never visited Kyiv even though he served on the board of directors of the Ukrainian conglomerate.

“In September he was peddling new lies,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise told the judge in February. “New disinformation that he has admitted came from Russian intelligence sources.”

Smirnov was also charged in a separate tax evasion indictment. He admitted that he provided filed false income tax forms to hide millions in income.

According to his plea agreement, he received more than $2 million from multiple unidentified sources in 2020, 2021 and 2022, to pay personal expenses for himself and his domestic partner, a woman that he has referred to as his girlfriend and at other times his wife, although they are not married.

“These expenditures included a $1.4 million Las Vegas condominium, a Bentley, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of clothes, Jewelry and accessories for himself and domestic partner purchased at high-end retailers in Los Angeles and Las Vegas,” prosecutors wrote in the plea deal.

Smirnov told his professional tax return preparer that he would not disclose how he earned any income and that the tax preparer shouldn’t inquire about how he earned his income. He also instructed the tax preparer to delete any emails ormessages they exchanged.

Follow @edpettersson