WASHINGTON — An FBI confidential human source has been indicted on two counts of allegedly feeding the bureau false information about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign.
Alexander Smirnov, 43, who disliked President Joe Biden, was arrested in Las Vegas after returning from a trip overseas, according to the Justice Department. The case grew out of the special counsel investigation being led by David Weiss, who is also leading the case against Hunter Biden. Weiss had been appointed by former President Donald Trump as the top federal prosecutor in Delaware.
The 37-page indictment alleges that Smirnov had been an informant for the FBI since 2010 and "provided false derogatory information to the FBI" about both Bidens after Joe Biden became a candidate for president in 2020.
Smirnov allegedly told the FBI — falsely — that officials with Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that Hunter Biden worked for, had told him they hired Hunter Biden because he would "protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems." Smirnov allegedly told the FBI — again, falsely — that Burisma officials had told him they paid Hunter Biden and Joe Biden $5 million and that it would take investigators 10 years to find the illicit payments to Joe Biden.
"As alleged herein, the events the Defendant first reported to the Handler in June 2020 were fabrications. In truth and fact, the 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 [Joe Biden] had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office. In short, the Defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden], the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against [Joe Biden] and his candidacy."
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The indictment states that Smirnov "repeated some of his false claims" after being interviewed by FBI special agents in September 2023, while he "changed his story as to other of his claims, and promoted a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials."
Smirnov wrote in one May 2020 message to his FBI handler that Joe Biden was "going to jail" and suggested that he knew some of the allegations "should be soon in the news."
A source familiar told NBC News that Hunter Biden does not know this individual who was charged and does not believe he ever met him.