A former FBI informant accused of falsely claiming that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter accepted bribes, which paved the way for Republicans to seek to remove the US president, pleaded guilty, according to local media reports this Thursday.
Pursuant to a court agreement, Alexander Smirnov, 44, admitted to lying about alleged million-dollar bribes which he said the US president and his son Hunter had received from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, according to court documents filed in a California court and cited by the newspaper Los Angeles Times.
In a motion filed after his arrest last February in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Justice Department said that the former informant had contacts with foreign intelligence services, including Russia.
Smirnov agreed to plead guilty to creating a false record in a federal investigation, obstructing justice and failing to pay taxes and fines on $2.1 million in income between 2020 and 2022.
The agreement recommends a sentence of at least two years behind bars and no more than six years, in addition to paying more than $600,000 in restitution, the newspaper reports.
Smirnov’s claims that He was an informant since 2010 for the FBIserved as fuel for Republicans in the US Congress to open an investigation against the US president and his son.
Biden granted a “full and unconditional” pardon to his son Hunter for cases of illegal possession of a weapon and tax fraud, at the beginning of the month, which exempts him from a possible prison sentence.
The president, who had said that he would not intervene in the proceedings against his son, justified the pardon by saying that Hunter was treated differently by Justice because he was his son.
Justice Department special prosecutor David Weiss is in charge of the investigation against Hunter in California for tax fraud and was the one who signed the agreement with Smirnow.
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