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As part of the plea deal with Justice Department special counsel
David Weiss, Alexander Smirnov will admit he fabricated that the
story that became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry
in Congress.
The plea agreement comes just weeks after prosecutors filed new
tax evasion charges against Smirnov. The two sides will
recommend a sentence of at least two years behind bars and no
more than six years, according to the agreement.
David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, attorneys for Smirnov,
said they will make their case for a fair sentence in court and
declined to comment further.
Smirnov was arrested in February on allegations that he falsely
reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with
the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter Biden and Joe
Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016. Smirnov told his handler
that an executive claimed to have hired Hunter Biden to “protect
us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems,” according to
court documents.
Prosecutors said Smirnov had contact with Burisma executives,
but it was routine and actually took place in 2017, after
President Barack Obama and Biden, his vice president, had left
office—when Biden would have had no ability to influence U.S.
policy. Prosecutors said he made the bribery allegations after
he “expressed bias” against Biden while he was a presidential
candidate.
He repeated some of the false claims when he was interviewed by
FBI agents in September 2023 and changed his story about others
and “promoted a new false narrative after he said he met with
Russian officials,” prosecutors said.
Smirnov has agreed to plead guilty to charges of tax evasion and
causing a false FBI record, according to court papers.
Smirnov is being prosecuted by the same special counsel who
brought federal gun and tax charges against Hunter Biden. Hunter
was supposed to be sentenced this month on his convictions in
those cases until he was pardoned by his father
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