By Steve Neavling
A former FBI informant who invented a story about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter taking bribes — a claim that played a pivotal role in the Republican-led impeachment inquiry — was sentenced Wednesday to six years in federal prison.
Alexander Smirnov, who admitted guilt last month in Los Angeles federal court, faced charges of tax evasion and lying to the FBI about a fabricated bribery plot, the Associated Press reports. Prosecutors said his actions were intended to sway the 2020 presidential election.
Smirnov, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, falsely told his FBI handler that around 2015, executives from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, had given $5 million each to then-Vice President Biden and his son Hunter.
Prosecutors revealed that Smirnov’s claim surfaced in 2020 and was driven by his bias against Biden as a presidential candidate. Investigators later determined that Smirnov had only routine business interactions with Burisma, beginning in 2017 — after Biden’s time as vice president had ended.
The false bribery allegations “triggered a firestorm in Congress,” prosecutors said, after they re-emerged years later during the House impeachment investigation into Biden. The Biden administration dismissed the impeachment effort as a “stunt.”
Before Smirnov’s arrest, Republican lawmakers demanded the FBI release the unredacted document that detailed the baseless allegations, despite acknowledging they couldn’t confirm the claims’ accuracy.
“In committing his crimes, he betrayed the United States, a country that showed him nothing but generosity, including conferring on him the greatest honor it can bestow, citizenship,” wrote prosecutors from Justice Department special counsel David Weiss’ office in court filings. “He repaid the trust the United States placed in him to be a law-abiding naturalized citizen and, more specifically, that one of its premier law enforcement agencies placed in him to tell the truth as a confidential human source, by attempting to interfere in a Presidential election.”
Smirnov will receive credit for time served since his arrest last February. While facing charges of lying to the FBI, prosecutors also accused him of concealing millions of dollars in income he earned between 2020 and 2022, filing those charges in November.
Defense attorneys for Smirnov requested a sentence of no more than four years, citing his “substantial assistance” to the U.S. government during his time as an informant for over a decade. They also pointed out that Smirnov has significant eye-related health issues, arguing that a lengthy prison term would unnecessarily worsen his suffering.
“Mr. Smirnov has learned a very grave lesson and proffers to this Honorable Court that he will not find himself on this side of the law again,” attorneys Richard Schonfeld and David Chesnoff stated in court documents.
The case against Smirnov was overseen by special counsel Weiss, who also brought charges against Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden had been expected to be sentenced in December after being convicted in a gun case and pleading guilty to tax charges. However, he was pardoned by President Biden, who argued that “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
