Republicans may have just lost one of their biggest witnesses in their quest to impeach Joe Biden.
The Justice Department on Thursday announced that it is bringing charges against FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who claimed to have insider information about alleged bribes paid to President Biden and his son Hunter by a Ukrainian oligarch.
Special Counsel David Weiss, the U.S. attorney who’s also overseeing two federal cases against Hunter Biden, is charging Smirnov with making a false statement and creating a false record related to the bribery allegation. This particular bribery allegation has been at the heart of House Republicans’ efforts to prove corruption in the Biden family.
For at least a year, Republicans have been pointing to a conversation that a supposedly credible (but confidential source) had with the FBI agents that, in their telling, proves that Hunter Biden—and his father—engaged in bribery. Republicans further allege that the FBI chose not to investigate those claims further when they had the chance.
Last July, Senator Chuck Grassley and his Republican colleagues sparred with the FBI in an effort to obtain documents about what this informant told investigators about the Ukrainian bribes. Then, Republicans publicly released the materials over the FBI’s objections.
The claim in the documents went like this: Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which at the time employed Hunter, paid both him and his father $5 million in bribes.
It would appear that a tall tale was told. “As alleged in the indictment, the events that Smirnov first reported to the FBI Agent in June 2020 were fabrications,” the Justice Department wrote in a press release announcing the grand jury indictment.
According to the 37-page indictment, Smirnov “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.”
“Smirnov was told at least seven times he may have to testify about information he provided to [the] FBI and was admonished by the handler at least 21 times to tell the truth to the bureau,” according to an NBC News analysis of the indictment.