Months before the 2020 presidential election, a former FBI informant entered a guilty plea on Monday for giving federal officials misleading information about President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
This year, Alexander Smirnov was charged with providing his FBI handler with false information about the Bidens in June 2020. The information claimed that the father and son had received $5 million each from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that hired Hunter Biden, during the Obama administration, when Biden was vice president.
A confidential human source document linked to Smirnov’s claims was cited by numerous House Republicans as the main component of their impeachment investigation into Biden, who denied any misconduct.
After agreeing last week to enter a guilty plea to inducing the creation of a false and fraudulent record in a federal inquiry, Smirnov entered his plea in a California federal court. In a separate indictment that was made public last month, he also entered a guilty plea to tax evasion, acknowledging that he collected over $2 million in undeclared income for the 2020–2022 tax years.
At Smirnov’s sentencing next month, prosecutors and his lawyers agreed to suggest that the court sentence him to four to six years in jail and a year of supervised release. The plea deal says they agreed to pay about $675,000 in restitution.
Additionally, the arrangement gives Smirnov credit for the time he spent in pretrial custody after his February arrest.
In May 2020, when Biden was the probable Democratic nominee, Smirnov sent his handler a slew of texts indicating his bias against him. A month later, he made the bribery accusations, according to the indictment.
After meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November, prosecutors claimed that Smirnov was “actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections” in their attempt to have him detained pending trial.
A request for response Monday evening was not immediately answered by Smirnov’s lawyer.
In 2010, Smirnov joined the FBI as a confidential human source. Special counsel David Weiss, who had previously looked into Hunter Biden’s weapons and tax allegations, launched the case against him.
Hunter Biden entered a guilty plea to tax charges in September after being found guilty on federal weapons charges in June. Prior to his expected sentencing in the tax case on December 16 and the gun case on December 12, his father granted him a pardon this month.
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