FBI Informant Touted by Republicans Indicted for Lying About Bidens’ Involvement in Ukrainian Business

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File

An FBI informant whose allegations have been cited by congressional Republicans was charged on Thursday with lying about the supposed business dealings of President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

Special Counsel David Weiss alleges that Alexander Smirnov, 43, told an FBI agent he spoke with the owner of Ukrainian energy company Burisma – on whose board Hunter Biden sat – about the company’s desire to do business in the United States.

Weiss says Smirnov told the FBI that Burisma executives admitted they appointed Hunter Biden to the board to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.” The defendant also told the FBI that the company paid $5 million apiece to Hunter Biden and his father, who was vice president of the United States at the time.

Republicans have alleged that as vice president, Biden used foreign aid as leverage over Ukraine’s government to fire a prosecutor who, they claim, was investigating Burisma for corruption. This claim has been proven false.

The indictment states that Smirnov’s statements about the Bidens’ were untrue.

“In truth and fact, the Defendant had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the then Ukrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016, in other words, when [Joe Biden] had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office,” it reads.

Smirnov’s claims have been touted as supposedly damning evidence against the Bidens, notably by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the latter of whom has been investigating the Bidens for a year as chair of the House Oversight Committee.

Weiss has been prosecuting Hunter Biden, who is facing nine felony tax counts. The president’s son has pleaded not guilty to all counts.