Prosecuted for fabricating false corruption charges against Joe Biden and his son, a former FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, admitted to investigators that he had received information from people “associated with Russian intelligence,” prosecutors said on Tuesday, February 20. Americans.
This former American-Israeli “informant” of the federal police, arrested Thursday in Las Vegas, is suspected of having lied by accusing the American president and his son Hunter Biden of having each received $5 million in bribes (4.65 million euros) to allow a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, to escape prosecution. But according to prosecutor David Weiss and other judges, “the misinformation that (Mr. Smirnov) is spreading is not limited to 2020. He is actively peddling new lies that could have an impact on the American elections (of 2024), after a meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.”
“During his custodial interrogation on February 14, Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in spreading a story” about Hunter Biden, prosecutors add in a court document filed with a Nevada court. In 2020, the informant assured an FBI agent that he had a meeting with Burisma officials “in 2015 and – or – 2016, during the Obama-Biden administration.”
The impeachment investigation against Joe Biden weakened
The members of this Ukrainian gas company then confided to having hired Hunter Biden to their board of directors to “protect themselves, through his father, from all kinds of problems”, according to the informant. A service for which “they had specifically paid $5 million” each to Joe Biden and his son, Mr. Smirnov had claimed.
Mr. Smirnov's story had been used by Mr. Biden's opponents to fuel suspicions of corruption against him and his son. The right accuses Joe Biden, so far without conclusive proof, of having used his influence when he was Barack Obama's vice-president (2009-2017) to allow his son Hunter to conduct questionable deals in Ukraine and in China. But this is a completely fabricated story, the magistrates repeated on Tuesday, according to whom the consequences of these false accusations “continue to be felt today”.
The indictment of Mr. Smirnov for transmitting false information to the FBI about Joe and Hunter Biden thus weakens the impeachment investigation led by Republicans in Congress against the American president. A first parliamentary hearing was organized at the end of September 2023, during which the experts interviewed agreed that there was currently nothing to justify an indictment of President Biden. “There is no evidence that President Biden committed any wrongdoing,” emphasized House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
