The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged a FBI informant Thursday who provided details about an alleged bribery scheme involving Hunter Biden, Joe Biden and Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.
Special counsel David Weiss indicted Alexander Smirnov, the confidential human source (CHS) who told the FBI in 2020 about alleged corruption involving Burisma and the two Bidens, on one count of making a false statement and one count of creating a false and fictitious record. Smirnov told the FBI that Burisma executives had discussed paying millions of dollars to Hunter and Joe Biden in order to ensure that Joe Biden would use his political clout to protect the company’s interests.
The indictment asserts that Smirnov only made contact with Burisma executives in 2017, after Biden’s stint as vice president concluded and after the Ukrainian investigator probing Burisma had lost his job, according to the indictment.
“The indictment alleges that [Smirnov] transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [President Biden] after expressing bias against [Biden] and his presidential candidacy,” Weiss’ office said in a statement announcing the charges.
In 2020, Smirnov told the FBI that Burisma executives had told him in 2015 and 2016 that they hired Hunter Biden to the company’s board to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.” Joe Biden was leading Ukraine policy for the Obama administration at that time, and has subsequently boasted that he got a Ukrainian prosecutor, who was investigating the company for corruption, fired after he threatened to withhold approximately $1 billion in aid for Ukraine
Smirnov further alleged that Burisma executives paid Joe Biden and Hunter Biden approximately $5 million each so that Hunter could “take care of all those issues through his dad.” These claims formed the basis of an FBI FD-1023 form, which Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley obtained via a DOJ whistleblower.
FBI agents use FD-1023 forms to document the claims made by confidential human sources without actually drawing any conclusions about the veracity of the underlying information.
“Last year when Senator Grassley brought the existence of an FD-1023 containing allegations against then-Vice President Biden to our attention, we sought the unclassified FD-1023 form from the FBI. FBI officials and Director Wray refused to release the form publicly because they claimed it would jeopardize the safety of a confidential human source who they claimed was invaluable to the FBI,” House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “When asked by the committee about their confidence in the confidential human source, the FBI told the committee the confidential human source was credible and trusted, had worked with the FBI for over a decade, and had been paid six figures. The FBI’s actions in this matter are very concerning. The FBI had this form for years and it appears they did nothing to verify the troubling claims contained within the record until Congress became aware of and demanded access to them.”
The FBI is holding onto another FD-1023 document that apparently details alleged bribery and corruption involving Hunter Biden and his father, according to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan. If convicted, Smirnov faces up to 25 years of imprisonment, according to the DOJ.
“Today’s indictment confirms several points Senator Grassley has made repeatedly. The informant behind the FD-1023 was, indeed, a long-serving, trusted FBI source used by the agency for criminal investigations since the Obama administration. In fact, he was so trusted that the FBI provided him authorization ‘to engage in illegal activity for investigative purposes,’” a spokesperson for Grassley told the DCNF. “After withholding information from Congress and the American people, and hiding behind the guise of protecting ‘sources and methods,’ the Department of Justice has now exposed their own source. Accordingly, this indictment isn’t enough – the public has a right to see all the underlying evidence supporting the Biden Justice Department’s case. The Biden administration must show its work.”
The DOJ and the White House did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
Nick Pope on February 15, 2024
