Special counsel David Weiss has charged a former FBI informant who testified to Congress with “false information” regarding the role of President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
A federal grand jury charged Alexander Smirnov on Feb. 14 with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record.
Mr. Smirnov was arrested at Reid International Airport in Las Vegas after arriving from abroad. He appeared at a federal court in Las Vegas.
According to the Department of Justice, “despite repeated admonishments that he must provide truthful information to the FBI and that he must not fabricate evidence, Smirnov provided false derogatory information to the FBI” about President Biden and Mr. Biden, who are identified as “Public Official 1” and “Businessperson 1,” respectively.
Mr. Smirnov told the FBI in 2020 that the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings hired Mr. Biden to “protect” the company, “through his dad, from all kinds of problems,“ and that Burisma gave $5 million to each of the Bidens. This was all so that Mr. Biden would ”take care of all those issues through his dad,” Mr. Smirnov said.
Mr. Biden was on the board of Burisma while his father was the U.S. vice president between January 2009 and January 2017.
Mr. Smirnov, according to the 37-page indictment, “transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against” President Biden in 2020, when President Biden won the presidency.
Mr. Smirnov, meeting with the FBI in September 2023, “repeated some of his false claims, changed his story as to other of his claims, and promoted a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials,” according to the indictment.
Mr. Smirnov faces up to 25 years behind bars if convicted.
The House Oversight Committee has been investigating President Biden and his son’s business dealings. Its probe has turned up bank records revealing at least $20 million in payments from foreign entities that were channeled through 20 shell companies to members of the president’s family as well as their business associates.
The payments—sourced from such countries as Russia, China, Ukraine, and Romania—were also observed to have begun during the president’s time as vice president and, in some cases, coincided with his trips to those countries.
President Biden has called allegations about his involvement in his family members’ business dealings a “bunch of lies.”
The Republican Party has alleged that the Bidens profited off the elder Biden’s vice presidency in what they have called the “Biden brand.”
“For years, President Biden has lied to the American people about his knowledge of and participation in his family’s corrupt business schemes,” Mr. Comer said during a Sept. 29, 2023, hearing. “He lied by telling the American people that there was an ‘absolute wall’ between his official government duties and his personal life.”
Mr. Comer alleged that the elder Biden, as vice president, “spoke, dined, and developed relationships with his family’s foreign business targets. These business targets include foreign oligarchs who sent millions of dollars to his family. It also includes a Chinese national who wired a quarter of a million dollars to his son.”
The Chinese national was Jonathan Li, for whose son Vice President Biden allegedly wrote a letter of recommendation.
Mr. Biden has been charged on tax-related charges.
