FBI informant is charged with lying about Joe and Hunter Biden’s ties to Ukrainian energy firm

WASHINGTON —  An FBI informant has been charged with lying to authorities about claims of a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme that he said involved President Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company — claims that are central to House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president.

Alexander Smirnov falsely reported in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016, prosecutors said Thursday.

Smirnov had said a Burisma executive claimed to have hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems,” prosecutors said.

Smirnov, 43, appeared in court in Las Vegas briefly on Thursday after being charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record. He did not enter a plea.

The judge ordered the courtroom cleared after federal public defender Margaret Wightman Lambrose requested a closed hearing for arguments about sealing court documents. She declined to comment on the case.

Smirnov’s claims have been central to the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark what is now a House impeachment inquiry into Biden.

An attorney for Hunter Biden, who is expected to give a deposition this month, said the charges against the informant show the probe is “based on dishonest, uncredible allegations and witnesses.”

Prosecutors say Smirnov had contact with Burisma executives, but that it was routine and actually took place in 2017, after President Obama and Joe Biden, his vice president, had left office — so Biden would have had no power to influence U.S. policy.

Smirnov “transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against Public Official 1, the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against Public Official 1 and his candidacy,” the indictment said.

The informant repeated some of the false claims when he was interviewed by FBI agents in September 2023 and changed his story to promote “a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials,” prosecutors said.

If convicted, Smirnov faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.

The charges were filed by Justice Department special counsel David Weiss, who has separately charged Hunter Biden with firearm and tax violations.

The Burisma allegations became a flashpoint in Congress as Republicans pursuing investigations into President Biden and his family demanded the FBI release an unredacted form documenting the allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm whether the allegations were true.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) had subpoenaed the FBI last year for the document, known as FD-1023, as Republicans deepened their inquiry into Biden and his son Hunter ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Working alongside Comer, Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa released an unclassified document that Republicans said was significant in their investigation of Hunter Biden. It added to information that had been widely aired during President Trump’s first impeachment trial involving Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani’s efforts to dig up dirt on the Bidens ahead of the 2020 election.

The Biden administration said at the time that the claims had been debunked years ago.

The impeachment inquiry into Biden over his son’s business dealings has lagged in the House, but the panel is pushing ahead with its work.

Hunter Biden is expected to appear before the Oversight Committee later this month. His attorney, Abbe Lowell, said he had long warned that the GOP probe was based on “lies told by people with political agendas, not facts,” adding: “We were right and the air is out of their balloon.”

A judge set a detention hearing next Tuesday for Smirnov, who was arrested at the Las Vegas airport after arriving in the U.S. from overseas.

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.