Hunter Biden Informant Arrested
The FBI arrested an informant who provided information about the ongoing investigation into President Joe Biden’s son Hunter this week. The move came as Republican investigators in Congress revealed new communications regarding the Biden family’s business dealings while Joe Biden was vice president.
Special counsel David Weiss accused Alexander Smirnov of making false claims about the president’s son regarding an alleged bribery scheme.
According to the indictment, Smirnov was charged with two counts of making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record regarding his testimony regarding the Biden family’s business dealings in Ukraine.
Smirnov informed the FBI of an alleged plot by the president and his son to try and get a bribe from officials from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Hunter Biden served on the board of the energy company while his father was vice president. The younger Biden was reportedly paid about $1 million per year in this role despite having no energy sector experience prior.
Smirnov said that a Burisma official stated that Hunter Biden was hired to the company’s board to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems,” including an investigation from former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was probing the company at the time.
Ex-FBI informant Alexander Smirnov arrested, accused of smearing Biden, son Hunterhttps://t.co/o01RWpLgR2 pic.twitter.com/kPzcJiaFlJ
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) February 16, 2024
The prosecutor was fired from the role after pressure from then-Vice President Biden, who promised to withhold an American aid package unless he was removed.
Smirnov’s statement to the FBI was that the company’s founder Mykola Zlochevsky offered both Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million bribes each.
He also stated that there were two phone calls between himself and Zlochevsky in which the former Burisma official allegedly said that the payments were coerced and that it would “take investigators 10 years to find records of illicit payments.”
The special counsel claims that Smirnov’s claims were “fabrications.”
Weiss wrote that Smirnov’s contacts came only after the end of Biden’s tenure as vice president and after Shokin was fired. The special counsel argued that at the time, Biden “had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General [Shokin] was no longer in office.”
He then argued that this was done with “bias” against Biden “and his candidacy.”
