Lies, damned lies, and politics: Republican source for Biden dirt admits he made it up

Matthew Medsger, Boston Herald on Dec 12, 2024

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The former FBI informant who claimed he could prove that then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden were paid $5 million a piece by the owners of Ukrainian energy company Burisma now admits he made the whole thing up.

Alexander Smirnov lied when he told the FBI that Hunter Biden, who sat on Burisma’s board while President Joe Biden was serving as No. 2 in the Obama White House, used his father’s political position to force the Ukrainian company into making payments to both Bidens in 2015 or 2016, he admitted in a plea deal revealed Thursday.

“In truth and fact. Defendant had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016 — in other words, when (Biden) could not engage in any official act to influence U.S. policy,” the plea deal reads, in part.

According to the plea, which serves as an admission to guilt on a felony count of lying to investigators and three more of tax evasion, Smirnov, took issue with the Bidens in 2020 for political reasons and told his FBI handler he had knowledge of corruption, but investigators later learned he was embellishing his access to company officials and inside information.

“Defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against Public Official 1, the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against Public Official 1 and his candidacy,” the plea reads, in part.

Smirnov’s entirely-made-up version of events served as the backbone of a year-long effort by Congressional Republicans to drum up impeachment charges to levy against President Biden over his alleged role in the bribery scheme.

Ohio’s U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said Smirnov’s assertion got to the “heart” of the GOP’s investigation into the Bidens, while House Oversight Chair U.S. Rep. James Comer, R-KY, called it “a very crucial piece of our investigation.”

After Smirnov was arrested in February, prosecutors revealed much of the information he was sharing with his FBI handlers was coming from the Kremlin.

“Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1,” they wrote, referring to Hunter Biden.

Smirnov’s exact claims were made public in June of 2023, after U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley published a redacted version of the FBI form he used to spin his lies to his handlers. Ranking House Republican U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik told Fox News that the allegations represented “the biggest political corruption scandal, not only in my lifetime, but I would say the past 100 years.”

Hunter Biden was recently pardoned by President Biden for any and all crimes he may have committed while working for Burisma and in the years that followed.

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