Justice Department Indicts Informant in Biden Bribery Scandal
A federal court has unsealed a two-count indictment against Alexander Smirnov, a former FBI Confidential Human Source. Special Counsel David Weiss on Wednesday announced that Smirnov is facing two charges related to fabricating claims about President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
The issue centers on the bribery scandal that came to light in July 2023. Smirnov accused the president and his son of accepting bribes from Ukrainian energy company Burisma in exchange for clearing the way for the company to do business in America.
The indictment alleges that Smirnov “provided false derogatory information” about Biden and his son. The document refers to the president as “Public Official 1” and Hunter as “Businessperson 1.”
Despite repeated admonishments that he must provide truthful information to the FBI and that he must not fabricate evidence, the Defendant provided false derogatory information to the FBI about Public Official 1, an elected official in the Obama-Biden Administration who left office in January 2017, and Businessperson 1, the son of Public Official 1, in 2020, after Public Official 1 became a candidate for President of the United States of America.
Smirnov was arrested at the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada, after arriving from overseas.
The indictment dissects Smirnov’s claims, noting discrepancies and fabrications in his reports. Of particular note are the allegations that he deliberately misrepresented Joe and Hunter’s dealings with Burisma. He suggested that both parties received payments in exchange for political protection. RedState’s Jennifer Van Laar covered the allegations when they first came to light.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has just released the unclassified FD-1023 “alleging then VP Biden engaged in a criminal bribery scheme.”
From Grassley’s website:
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today released an unclassified FBI-generated record describing an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a Ukrainian business executive. Grassley acquired the record, an FD-1023, via legally protected disclosures by Justice Department whistleblowers.
“For the better part of a year, I’ve been pushing the Justice Department and FBI to provide details on its handling of very significant allegations from a trusted FBI informant implicating then-Vice President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme. While the FBI sought to obfuscate and redact, the American people can now read this document for themselves, without the filter of politicians or bureaucrats, thanks to brave and heroic whistleblowers. What did the Justice Department and FBI do with the detailed information in the document? And why have they tried to conceal it from Congress and the American people for so long? The Justice Department and FBI have failed to come clean, but Chairman Comer and I intend to find out,” Grassley said.
“The FBI’s Biden Bribery Record tracks closely with the evidence uncovered by the Oversight Committee’s Biden family influence peddling investigation. In the FBI’s record, the Burisma executive claims that he didn’t pay the ‘big guy’ directly but that he used several bank accounts to conceal the money. That sounds an awful lot like how the Bidens conduct business: using multiple bank accounts to hide the source and total amount of the money,” House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer said. “At our hearing with IRS whistleblowers, they testified that they had never seen or heard of this record during the Biden criminal investigation, despite having potentially corroborating evidence. Given the misconduct and politicization at the Department of Justice, the American people must be able to read this record for themselves. I thank Senator Grassley for providing much needed transparency to the American people. We must hold the Department of Justice accountable for seeking to bury this record to protect the Bidens.”
The indictment further alleges that 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.”
In essence, the Justice Department is accusing Smirnov of falsely describing phone calls in which a Burisma executive said he was compelled to pay Joe and Hunter in exchange for favors.
The Defendant also reported two purported phone calls between himself and Burisma Official 1 wherein Burisma Official 1 stated that he had been forced to pay Public Official 1 and Businessperson 1 and that it would take investigators 10 years to find records of illicit payments to Public Official 1.
As alleged herein, the events the Defendant first reported to the Handler in June 2020 were fabrications. In truth and fact, the Defendant had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the thenUkrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016, in other words, when Public Official 1 had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office. In short, the Defendant 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 legal proceedings against Smirnov, scheduled for the coming months, will bring further details of this case to light. There could also be pushback from Republican lawmakers, who brought the original allegations to light last year.
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