Washington A former FBI informant was given a six-year jail sentence on Wednesday for fabricating a tale about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter receiving bribes that was at the heart of Republicans’ attempt to have him impeached.
Last month, in a federal court in Los Angeles, Alexander Smirnov entered a guilty plea to tax evasion and lying to the FBI about the fraudulent bribery plan, which prosecutors said was an attempt to sway the 2020 presidential election.
Smirnov, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, told his FBI handler that in 2015, then-Vice President Biden and his son received $5 million each from leaders of the Ukrainian energy business Burisma.
Prosecutors claim Smirnov made his explosive accusation in 2020 after expressing prejudice against Joe Biden as a presidential candidate. In actuality, investigators discovered that beginning in 2017, during Biden’s tenure as vice president, Smirnov had only regular business interactions with Burisma.
When Smirnov’s untrue statement reappeared years later as part of the House impeachment investigation on President Biden—a Democrat who defeated Republican then-President Donald Trump in 2020—prosecutors pointed out that it sparked a congressional firestorm. The House impeachment attempt was written off by the Biden administration as a gimmick.
Republicans, who admitted they couldn’t verify whether the claims were accurate, had asked that the FBI provide the unredacted form containing the unsubstantiated charges prior to Smirnov’s detention.
The Justice Department special counsel David Weiss team said in court documents that he abandoned the United States in his crimes, a nation that gave him nothing but goodwill, including granting him citizenship, the highest honor it can offer. He attempted to sabotage a presidential election in order to repay the United States for believing that he was a law-abiding naturalized citizen and, more precisely, that one of its top law enforcement agencies trusted him to be a reliable source of information.
In the complaint alleging that he lied to the FBI, Smirnov will receive credit for the time he has been incarcerated since his arrest in February of last year. In November, prosecutors filed further tax allegations, claiming he had hidden millions of dollars in income from 2020 to 2022.
Noting the significant help he gave to the U.S. government as an FBI informant for over ten years, Smirnov’s attorneys had asked for no more than four years in prison. In court documents, Smirnov’s attorneys stated that he has severe eye-related health problems and contended that a longer sentence would needlessly increase his suffering.
In court documents, lawyers Richard Schonfeld and David Chesnoff informed the judge that Mr. Smirnov had learned a very serious lesson and that he would never again find himself in this situation.
Weiss brought weapons and tax charges against Hunter Biden and prosecuted Smirnov. After being found guilty at a trial in the gun case and entering a guilty plea to tax crimes, Hunter Biden was scheduled to receive his sentence in December. However, his father pardoned him, stating that he thought this procedure was tainted by raw politics, which resulted in a miscarriage of justice.
Hunter Biden and President-elect Trump, who was accused in two federal crimes by a different special counsel, have both escaped significant punishment, according to court documents written by Smirnov’s attorneys in their request for a lower sentence.
Following Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in November, special counsel Jack Smith dropped the two federal cases against Trump, alleging that he had conspired to reverse his 2020 election loss and hoarded confidential materials at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.
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