An FBI informant has been charged with fabricating a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving US President Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company. This issue is at the center of Republican efforts to investigate President Biden in the US Congress.
Prosecutors said Alexander Smirnov falsely reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016, according to court documents. , Smirnov told the FBI that an executive claimed to have hired Mr. Hunter Biden to “protect us through his father, from all kinds of trouble.”
Prosecutors say Mr. Smirnov actually only had a casual business relationship with the company in 2017 and made the bribery allegations after he “expressed prejudice” against Mr. Joe Biden when he was a presidential candidate.
Mr. Smirnov, 43, appeared in court in Las Vegas on Thursday charged with perjury. He did not comment on the charge. The judge ordered everyone out of the courtroom after federal public defender Margaret Wightman Lambrose asked for a closed session while arguments were made about “reliable” court documents. She declined to comment on the case.
The whistleblower's allegations have been at the center of Republican efforts in Congress to investigate the president and his family and helped launch what is now a House impeachment inquiry into President Biden. A lawyer for Mr. Hunter Biden said the charges show that the investigation is “based on dishonest, unbelievable allegations and witnesses.”
The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Jamie Raskin, called for an end to the impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
Lawmaker Raskin said the allegations against President Biden “have always been a bunch of lies built on conspiracy theories.”
But the Republican leader of the Oversight Committee, James Comer, downplayed the importance of the whistleblower, who was at the center of the investigation.
He said the investigation “is based on a large history of evidence, including bank and witness records”. The commission, he said, will continue to “follow the facts” and determine whether to proceed with the impeachment inquiry.
Prosecutors said in the indictment that the informant Smirnov had had contact with Burismas executives, but they were routine contacts and his real work with this company began in 2017, after President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden ended their terms and Mr. Biden had no able to influence American politics.
Smirnov went from “routine contacts to extraordinary business contacts with Burisman in 2017 and then made allegations of bribery against the presidential candidate,” the indictment states.
Prosecutors said he repeated some of the false claims when interviewed by FBI agents in September 2023 and changed his story “inventing a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials.”
If convicted, Smirnov could face up to 25 years in prison.