Former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who was indicted earlier this year for lying about President Joe Biden’s and Hunter Biden’s business dealings, faces new tax-related charges brought by special counsel David Weiss.
The ten-count indictment charges Smirnov with tax evasion and filing false tax returns, accusing him of receiving more than $2 million from multiple sources between 2020 and 2022. With the money, he bought a $1.4 million condo in Las Vegas, a Bentley, and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of clothes, jewelry, and accessories for himself and his significant other.
The charging document was filed last Thursday but wasn’t unsealed until Tuesday in California federal court.
Smirnov had been a confidential human source for the FBI from 2010 until his arrest last February. Prosecutors claim that he fabricated allegations that the Biden family received $10 million in bribes from Ukrainian energy company Burisma as part of an influence-peddling scheme. These are the same allegations that drove the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
Though they ultimately stopped short of impeaching the sitting president, House Republicans did accuse him of impeachable conduct in a long-awaited inquiry report released on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in August.
Smirnov has denied prosecutors’ allegations that he made false statements about the Bidens. He admitted that the information came from Russian intelligence officials.
In an email to the Associated Press, his lawyers said he “intends to vigorously fight” the tax-related charges “with the same intensity as he has fought the original indictment.”
The new indictment comes ahead of Smirnov’s false-statements trial, which is set to start on January 8. It was previously delayed.
With the authority of the Justice Department, Weiss has been investigating Hunter Biden and filed two separate indictments against him: one related to his illegal purchase of a firearm and the other connected to federal tax charges.
Hunter Biden is expected to be sentenced in December for both criminal cases, in which he’s accused of avoiding to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes and lying on a federal form when he bought a handgun in 2018.