By JAIMIE DING and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER, Associated Press
Los Angeles (AP) On Monday, a former FBI informant entered a guilty plea to lying about a fraudulent bribery plot involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, which became a major focus of the congressional Republican impeachment investigation.
According to court documents, Alexander Smirnov entered his plea in Los Angeles to a criminal charge related to the false narrative and a tax evasion allegation resulting from a different indictment that accused him of hiding millions of dollars in revenue.
The plea deal states that prosecutors and the defense have agreed to suggest a sentence of four to six years in jail.
Smirnov will receive credit for his service since his arrest in February on allegations that he informed his FBI handler that in 2015, President Biden and Hunter Biden received $5 million each from leaders of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Prosecutors claimed that Smirnov had been an informant for almost ten years before making the shocking claims against the Bidens in June 2020. This came after he had expressed prejudice against Joe Biden as a presidential candidate.
However, court documents show that Smirnov had only regular business ties with Burisma from 2017. According to charging documents, an FBI field office looked into the claims and suggested that the case be concluded in August 2020.
There is no proof that Joe Biden was corrupt or took bribes while serving as president or vice president.
Before the indictment, Smirnov’s name was unknown to the public, but his allegations were crucial to the Republican drive in Congress to look into the president and his family and sparked a House impeachment investigation on Biden. 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.
In an interview with investigators in September 2023, Smirnov also asserted that the Russians most likely had recordings of Hunter Biden because the hotel where he had stayed in the capital of Ukraine was wired and under their control. He claimed that four senior Russian officials had given him the information.
But according to Smirnov’s indictment, Hunter Biden had never visited Ukraine.
After his detention this year, Smirnov told police that Russian intelligence officials were involved in spreading a story about Hunter Biden. He also claimed to have contacts with officials connected to Russian intelligence.
Special Counsel David Weiss, who also prosecuted Hunter Biden on tax and weapons charges, brought the case against Smirnov. After being found guilty at trial in the gun case and entering a guilty plea to federal charges in the tax case, Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced this month. However, his father, who stated he thought raw politics had tainted this procedure and caused a miscarriage of justice, pardoned him this month.
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