Photo: The Washington Post
Special counsel David Weiss has filed charges against a confidential FBI informant for allegedly providing false information about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Alexander Smirnov provided information to the FBI that became the primary source of the Republicans' impeachment investigation into President Biden.
In 2020, Smirnov recounted two meetings he had with Burisma executives in which they told him they hired Hunter Biden to "protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems." He claimed the meetings occurred in 2015 or 2016 when Joe Biden was Vice President. He also said he was told that the executives paid $5 million each to Hunter Biden and then-Vice President to ensure that the Ukrainian prosecutor general investigating Burisma was removed from office.
However, Weiss claims that Smirnov lied to FBI investigators and charged him with one count of making a false statement and one count of creating a false and fictitious record.
Weiss alleges that Smirnov's claims were "a fabrication, an amalgam of otherwise unremarkable business meetings and contacts that had actually occurred but at a later date than he claimed and for the purpose of pitching Burisma on the Defendant's services and products, not for discussing bribes to [Joe Biden] when he was in office."
"The indictment alleges that the [Smirnov] transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [President Biden] after expressing bias against [Biden] and his presidential candidacy," Weiss' office said in their statement announcing the charges.