Alexander Smirnov, the California man charged with lying to the FBI about fabricated criminal allegations against President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, has agreed to plead guilty, according to a Thursday filing with the court.
Smirnov was a longtime confidential informant who had been feeding his FBI handler information about an array of criminal activities. In 2020, he apparently decided to use the accumulated trust to tell the handler that the Bidens had each accepted $5 million in bribes from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma several years earlier. Hunter Biden sat on Burisma's board of directors from 2014 to 2018, which President-elect Donald Trump and right-wing outlets frequently used as evidence of impropriety throughout the 2020 election in an attempt to smear the president.
Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill launched investigations into the Bidens over this association, using Smirnov's fake allegations as a central piece of evidence. The misplaced zeal backfired: not only did the GOP-controlled committees fail to find any evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden, but Trump's efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government into launching their own investigation resulted in his impeachment.
While Trump was ultimately acquitted thanks to the support of Senate Republicans, Smirnov has not been as lucky. He was indicted in February 2024 by special counsel David Weiss, who was originally appointed by Trump's Justice Department to lead the now-defunct investigations into the Bidens. According to the charging documents, Smirnov "knew" the claims he provided were false.
Prosecutors from Weiss' office say that Smirnov will plead guilty to one count of creating a false federal record and three tax-related counts that he was charged with last months.
