WASHINGTON – A former FBI informant who fabricated a story about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter accepting bribes at the center of the Republican impeachment effort was sentenced Wednesday to six years in prison.
Alexander Smirnov pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court last month to tax evasion and lying to the FBI about a bogus bribery scheme that prosecutors say was an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. .
Smirnov, who holds dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship, falsely claimed to FBI agents that executives at Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son $5 million each around 2015. .
Prosecutors say Smirnov’s outburst in 2020 came after he expressed “bias” about presidential candidate Joe Biden. In fact, investigators found that Smirnov had only had routine business dealings with Burisma since 2017, after Biden’s term as vice president.
Prosecutors said Smirnov’s false claims resurfaced years later as part of the House impeachment inquiry against Democratic President Joe Biden, who defeated then-Republican President Donald Trump in 2020, and “caused a huge uproar in Congress.” “It caused this,” he said. The Biden administration rejected the House’s impeachment bid. An effort as a “stunt”.
Before Smirnov’s arrest, Republicans had demanded that the FBI release unredacted documents documenting the unconfirmed allegations, but acknowledged they could not confirm their veracity.
“He betrayed the United States by committing a crime,” Justice Department Special Counsel David Weiss’ team said in court documents. They didn’t show us anything.” “He is proud of the trust that the United States has placed in him as a law-abiding naturalized citizen and, more specifically, the trust that one of the United States’ major law enforcement agencies has placed in him as a confidential human intelligence source to tell the truth.” He repaid the trust he gave him by attempting to intervene in the presidential election.
Smirnov will receive credit for time he has served in prison since his arrest last February for lying to the FBI. Prosecutors filed new tax charges in November, accusing him of concealing millions of dollars in income he earned between 2020 and 2022.
Smirnov’s lawyers had asked for a sentence of no more than four years in prison, citing the “tremendous support” he provided to the U.S. government as an FBI informant over more than a decade. Mr Smirnov’s lawyers said in court papers that Mr Smirnov has serious eye-related health problems and argued that a long prison term would “unnecessarily prolong his suffering”. did.
“Mr. Smirnov has learned a very important lesson and has offered to never stand on this side of the law in court again,” attorneys Richard Schoenfeld and David Chesnoff told the judge in court documents.
Mr. Smirnov was prosecuted by Mr. Weiss, who also indicted Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges. Hunter Biden was convicted in a firearms case, pled guilty to tax charges and was scheduled to be sentenced in December. But his father pardoned him, saying he believed “raw politics had infected this process, which led to a miscarriage of justice.”
Smirnov’s lawyers asked for a reduced sentence, arguing that both Hunter Biden and President-elect Trump (who was indicted in two federal cases by a separate special counsel) are “escaped with significant impunity.” he wrote in court documents.
Special Counsel Jack Smith charges President Trump with conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss after his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris and storing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. Two federal lawsuits against Trump have been waived. November.
