A former FBI informant is accused of falsely claiming this President Biden and his son Hunter took bribes has agreed to plead guilty, according to court documents filed Thursday.
As part of the deal with Justice Department special counsel David Weiss, California resident Alexander Smirnov will admit that he made up the story that was at the heart of the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.
The agreement comes just weeks after prosecutors agreed brought new charges of tax evasion against Smirnov. According to the agreement, the two sides recommend a prison sentence of at least two years and a maximum of six years.
Smirnov's lawyers did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Thursday.
Smirnov was arrested in February on allegations that he falsely reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter Biden and Joe Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016. According to court documents, he hired Hunter Biden to “protect us from all sorts of problems through his father.”
Prosecutors said Smirnov had contact with Burisma executives, but that this was routine and actually took place in 2017, after the presidency Obama and Biden, his vice president, had left office – when Biden would no longer have had the opportunity to influence US politics. Prosecutors said he made the bribery allegations after expressing “bias” against Biden during his presidential run.
He repeated some of the false claims when he was interviewed by FBI agents in September 2023, changed his story about others and “spread a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials,” prosecutors said.
According to court documents, Smirnov has agreed to plead guilty to tax evasion and providing false FBI information.
A valued FBI informant for the past 13 years, Smirnov, 43, spent much of that time living a quiet, seemingly unremarkable life in suburban Los Angeles with a longtime girlfriend 15 years his senior, calling Calabasas , Woodland Hills and Orange at County Hall.
Smirnow's tenure as a confidential source for the FBI ended in spectacular fashion in February when an L.A. grand jury indicted him on charges of obstruction of justice and lying to federal agents.
Smirnov is being prosecuted by the same special counsel who indicted Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges. Hunter was scheduled to be sentenced this month based on his convictions in those cases until he was pardoned by his father.
Richer writes for the Associated Press. Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Matt Hamilton contributed to this report.