WASHINGTON (AP) — A former FBI informant accused of falsely claiming that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter accepted bribes has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges, according to court documents filed Thursday.
As part of the plea deal with Justice Department special counsel David Weiss, Alexander Smirnov will admit to fabricating the story at the center of the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.
The settlement comes just weeks after prosecutors filed new tax evasion charges against Smirnov. Under the agreement, the two sides will recommend a prison sentence of a minimum of two years and a maximum of six years.
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Lawyers for Smirnov did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Thursday.
Smirnov was arrested in February on charges that he falsely reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives linked to Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter Biden and Joe Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016. Smirnov told his supervisor that an executive claimed he hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his father, from all kinds of problems,” according to court documents.
Prosecutors said Smirnov had contact with Burisma executives, but that this was routine and actually occurred in 2017, after President Barack Obama and Biden, his vice president, left office — when Biden would have had no opportunity to change U.S. policy to influence. Prosecutors said he made the bribery allegations after “expressing prejudice” against Biden while he was a presidential candidate.
He repeated some of the false claims when interviewed by FBI agents in September 2023 and changed his story about others and “promoted a new false story after saying he met with Russian officials,” prosecutors said.
Smirnov has agreed to plead guilty to charges of tax evasion and causing a false FBI file, court papers show.
Smirnov is being prosecuted by the same special prosecutor who brought federal gun and tax charges against Hunter Biden. Hunter was scheduled to be sentenced this month based on his convictions in those cases until his father pardoned him.
