Who is Alexander Smirnov? Informant who fabricated bribery story about the Bidens
Las Vegas: Alexander Smirnov, the former FBI informant at the centre of a fabricated bribery scandal involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, has re-emerged in headlines as the U.S. government now seeks to release him from prison while he appeals his conviction.
Smirnov, 44, was sentenced to six years in prison in early January after pleading guilty in a Los Angeles federal court to charges of tax evasion and lying to the FBI. At the time, federal prosecutors described his false statements about a bribery scheme involving the Bidens as an attempt “to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.”
Smirnov has been in custody since February 2024, when he was arrested at the Las Vegas airport upon returning to the United States from overseas. A dual U.S. and Israeli citizen, Smirnov had previously told his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son $5 million each around 2015. Prosecutors said the explosive claim, made in 2020, surfaced after Smirnov had expressed "bias” against Biden as a presidential candidate.
But investigators later determined that Smirnov's actual interactions with Burisma were limited to routine business dealings beginning in 2017, after Biden had left office. Authorities said Smirnov’s false allegations “set off a firestorm in Congress” when they resurfaced during the House impeachment inquiry into President Biden — an effort the Biden administration dismissed as a “stunt.”
On Thursday, court records revealed that the government, along with Smirnov’s legal team, filed a joint motion seeking his release from custody while the case undergoes appeal. The motion noted that release would allow Smirnov to access proper treatment for health issues related to his eyes. It also stated that the government would review its “theory of the case.”
The case, initially prosecuted by former special counsel David Weiss, was reassigned Thursday following Weiss’s resignation in January — just days before former President Donald Trump returned to the White House for a second term. A new federal prosecutor has now taken over the matter. A hearing on the motion for Smirnov's release has not yet been scheduled.
Meanwhile, Weiss was also responsible for bringing gun and tax charges against Hunter Biden. The president’s son had been set to be sentenced in December after a conviction in the gun case and pleading guilty to tax offences. However, he was later pardoned by his father, President Biden, who stated he believed “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
(With inputs from AP)