A former FBI informant who fabricated a story about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter accepting bribes that became central to Republican impeachment efforts was sentenced Wednesday to six years in prison.
Alexander Smirnov pleaded guilty last month in federal court in Los Angeles to tax evasion and lying to the FBI about the phony bribery scheme in what prosecutors say was an attempt to influence the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Smirnov, an American and Israeli citizen, falsely claimed to his FBI director that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid then-Vice President Biden and his son $5 million each around 2015.
Smirnoff’s controversial allegation came in 2020 after he expressed “bias” toward Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, according to prosecutors. In fact, investigators found that Smirnoff had only routine business dealings with Burisma starting in 2017 — after Biden’s term as vice president.
Prosecutors noted that Smirnoff’s false claim “triggered a firestorm in Congress” when it resurfaced years later as part of the House impeachment inquiry into President Biden, a Democrat who defeated then-Republican President Donald Trump in 2020. The Biden administration has refused to impeach the House. Effort as a “trick.”
Before Smirnov’s arrest, Republicans demanded that the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they could not confirm whether they were true.
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“In committing his crimes, he betrayed the United States, a country that had shown him nothing but generosity, including granting him the greatest honor it could bestow: citizenship,” Justice Department special counsel David Weiss wrote in court papers. He responded to the trust placed in him by the United States to be a law-abiding naturalized citizen, and more specifically, by a major law enforcement agency to tell the truth as a confidential human source, by attempting to interfere in the country’s affairs. Presidential elections.”
Smirnov will be given credit for the time he has spent behind bars since his arrest last February in a case accused of lying to the FBI. In November, prosecutors filed new tax charges alleging he concealed millions of dollars in income he earned between 2020 and 2022.
Smirnov’s lawyers had asked for a prison sentence of no more than four years, citing the “substantial assistance” he provided to the US government as an FBI informant for more than a decade. Smirnov’s lawyers noted in court papers that he has serious health problems related to his eyes, and argued that a lengthy sentence would “unnecessarily prolong his suffering.”
“Smirnoff has learned a very serious lesson and submits to this honorable court that he will never find himself on this side of the law again,” attorneys Richard Schoenfeld and David Chesnoff told the judge in court papers.
Smirnoff was prosecuted by Weiss, who also filed gun and tax charges against Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced in December after being found guilty in a weapons trial and pleading guilty to tax charges. But his father obtained a pardon for him, and said he believed that “raw politics infected this process and led to a miscarriage of justice.”
In seeking a reduced sentence, Smirnoff’s lawyers wrote in court papers that both Hunter Biden and President-elect Trump — who has been indicted by a different special counsel in two federal cases — “emerged devoid of any meaningful punishment.”
Special counsel Jack Smith dropped the two federal cases against Trump — accusing him of conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss and hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida — after Trump’s presidential victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in 2020. Nov.
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