Disgraced former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov pleaded guilty Thursday to charges related to tax-evasion and his lies about the Biden family taking bribes from Ukraine.
Smirnov entered into the plea agreement Thursday with special counsel David Weiss instead of going to trial in California next month for false statements and tax evasion charges. He faces up to six years in prison and a year of supervised release, as well as a fine north of $675,000.
The former informant was indicted earlier this year for falsely telling the FBI that Joe and Hunter Biden took $10 million worth of bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch to pressure Ukraine into firing a prosecutor thought to be investigating Burisma Holdings.
Those claims were memorialized in an FBI document that Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) released last year. Smirnov divulged the allegations in 2020 during the years-long criminal investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes and were debunked four years later.
Prosecutors further alleged that Smirnov, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, had connections to Russian intelligence officials and that he had told his FBI handler about them. Before the criminal charges, Smirnov was an FBI informant on several cases and worked with the bureau for over a decade.
Beyond that, Smirnov was indicted last month for tax-evasion and filing false tax returns during the years 2020-22, when he made millions worth of income. In that time period, Smirnov spent lavishly on a $1.4 million Las Vegas condo and other expensive products for himself and his female partner.
Weiss prosecuted Hunter Biden on similar tax-evasion charges in California for failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes last decade. Biden also plead guilty to those charges in September rather than going to trial. In June, Biden was convicted on federal gun charges in Delaware for lying about his drug usage on mandatory gun paperwork when he was addicted to crack cocaine six years ago.
Smirnov’s falsehoods were separate from Hunter Biden’s lucrative business dealings with Burisma, which paid him over $80,000 per month as a member of the company’s board from 2014 to 2017. The company slashed Hunter Biden’s salary in half at the end of the Obama administration, when Joe Biden’s vice presidency concluded, according to the younger Biden’s tax-evasion indictment.
The younger Biden had no energy industry experience prior to his role at Burisma and held the position while his father was running point on the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy. Hunter Biden and his associates hauled in $27 million from foreign sources last decade during and after his father’s vice presidency, House Republicans determined during the impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
Republican lawmakers stressed that the discredited Smirnov claims were separate from the impeachment inquiry, while Democrats and Biden’s lawyers attempted to capitalize on them to cast doubt on it.
President Biden controversially pardoned his son on December 1, shielding him from the consequences of his tax and gun crimes. The pardon covers an 11-year period, January 1, 2014 to December 1, 2024, and any crimes Hunter Biden might have committed, making it one of the most generous pardons in U.S. history.