President Biden said the indictment of an FBI informant for lying about bribes allegedly paid to Mr. Biden and son Hunter Biden should compel Republicans to drop their impeachment probe of him.
“He is lying, and it should be dropped,” Mr. Biden said Friday at the White House. “It’s been an outrageous effort from the beginning.”
He was referring to Alexander Smirnov, who was charged Thursday by special counsel David C. Weiss with two counts of lying to the FBI.
Mr. Smirnov, 43, a longtime confidential human source for the FBI, “provided false and derogatory information” to the bureau, according to the prosecutor.
Mr. Smirnov claimed that executives of the Ukraine energy firm Burisma told him in 2015 and 2016 that they paid Hunter Biden and Joe Biden $5 million each to protect the company from “all kinds of problems” and help shake off a corruption probe by Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
Through email evidence, travel records and witness testimony, the indictment described how Mr. Smirnov couldn’t have met with Burisma officials when he claimed, undermining his bribery allegation against the president and Hunter Biden.
Mr. Smirnov’s bombshell bribery claim shook up a probe into whether Joe Biden participated in his son’s lucrative business deals, but it hasn’t played a central role in the investigation.
Instead, lawmakers conducting the impeachment inquiry into the president have focused on witness testimony from Hunter Biden’s former business partners as well as bank records to establish evidence that Joe Biden played a role in helping his family secure more than $20 million in foreign business deals.
House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican, said the impeachment inquiry “is not reliant on [Mr. Smirnov]. It is based on a large record of evidence, including bank records and witness testimony, revealing that Joe Biden knew of and participated in his family’s business dealings.”
After the president’s comments Friday, the House Judiciary Committee re-released a transcript of testimony by Scott Brady, who was the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania assigned to look into the Biden family’s deals in Ukraine, including allegations of pocketing a $10 million bribe.
Mr. Brady told House lawmakers last October that the Justice Department and FBI significantly hobbled his investigation. He said the top brass at the FBI showed intense interest in his investigation of the Bidens’ ties to Burisma and tried to slow down or halt his probe at every turn.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.