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Left: Hunter Biden arrives at the White House from Camp David, Sunday, July 28, 2024 (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta). Center: FILE – In this artist sketch depicts defendant Alexander Smirnov I federal court in Los Angeles, Feb. 26, 2024 (William T. Robles via AP). Right: Department of Justice Special Counsel David Weiss speaks during a news conference, Tuesday, June 11, 2024, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum).
A longtime FBI informant will soon be an admitted federal criminal.
Nearly 10 months passed between the first and second time Alexander Smirnov was indicted by special counsel David Weiss — for two different suites of federal crimes. Just over two weeks passed between the second indictment and the agreed upon plea deal.
The storyline here implicates a yearslong narrative about the alleged perfidy of President Joe Biden and his adult son Hunter Biden — as well as several million dollars hidden from the government.
In a 24-page Thursday filing, the defendant and the government made short work of those two cases. In sum, Smirnov was charged with 12 federal counts for a combination of misleading investigators and tax-related crimes. To cap things off, Smirnov will accept legal culpability for one count of causing the creation of a false and fictitious record in a federal investigation and three counts of tax evasion.
Under the terms of the deal, Smirnov will not be allowed to “contest facts agreed to” in the agreement itself, abide by “all agreements regarding sentencing” outlined in the document, refrain from committing any other major crimes, and appear in court as directed.
The defendant was first indicted on Valentine’s Day.
In the first indictment, the longtime FBI asset was accused of fabricating claims that President Biden and Hunter Biden were bribed by executives of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma.
This alleged nefariousness was said to have occurred while Joe Biden was vice president and Hunter Biden was a member of Burisma’s board. The purported scheme was allegedly part of a broader plan to orchestrate the firing of Ukraine’s then-prosecutor general Viktor Shokin and stave off a criminal probe of the gas company.
Publicly, the U.S. and the International Monetary Fund did not believe Shokin was doing enough to combat corruption in Ukraine and the prosecutor was also facing severe criticism at home over perceptions that he or his subordinates were corrupt themselves.
To hear Smirnov tell it, however, the sacking of the prosecutor was instead simply to protect the company — and to enrich the Bidens.
A statement of facts filed as an exhibit outlines the claims:
[I]n June 2020, Defendant reported, for the first time, two meetings in 2015 and/or 2016, during the Obama-Biden Administration, in which he claimed executives associated with Burisma, including Burisma Official 1, admitted to him that they hired Businessperson 1 to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems,” and later that they had specifically paid $5 million each to Public Official 1 and Businessperson 1, when Public Official 1 was still in office, so that “[Businessperson 1] will take care of all those issues through his dad,” referring to a criminal investigation being conducted by the then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General into Burisma and to “deal with [the then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General].”
“The events Defendant first reported to the Handler in June 2020 were fabrications,” the court filing goes on to note.
And, those fabrications were memorialized into an official FBI document — the basis of the admitted to falsification charge.
The statement of facts goes on to note that Smirnov actually only had contact with Burisma executives beginning in 2017 — well past the time the elder Biden had served as vice president and past the time when Shokin had served as prosecutor.
“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 document goes on.
In the court filings, “Public Official 1” refers to President Biden.
Two days before Thanksgiving, Smirnov was indicted again.
According to the second indictment, Smirnov significantly understated his income between 2020 and 2022, overstated his “fictitious” expenses in similar fashion, and took great pains to hide millions of dollars from his bank, a corporate accountant, and a tax preparer with a complicated shell game of hiring, firing, and stonewalling in order to circumvent accountability.
At the same time, he allegedly spent his money on lavish things.
“He used these funds to pay personal expenses for himself and his Domestic Partner, a woman that he has referred to as his girlfriend and at other times his wife, although they are not married,” the indictment alleges. “These expenditures included a $1.4 million Las Vegas condominium, a Bentley, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of clothes, jewelry and accessories for himself and Domestic Partner purchased at high-end retailers in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.”
Authorities say the funds were not only spent on the couple but were frequently “co-mingled” with the woman’s personal bank account “and used to pay” both her and Smirnov’s personal expenses.”
And, for the three tax years in question, Smirnov said he only took home between $40,000 and $50,000 in gross receipts and that he only owed a combined $5,269 in income taxes. In reality, the defendant and his corporate alter ego took in some $1.35 million in 2020; $684,000 in 2021; and $300,000 in 2022.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, Smirnov admitted to the higher income amounts and agreed to pay the back taxes he owes.
And, his admission comes with a whole host of waivers.
“Defendant will not file any claim for refund of taxes, penalties, or interest for amounts attributable to the to the subject matter of this plea agreement,” the document reads. “Defendant may be liable for the fraud penalty imposed by the Internal Revenue Code.”
Smirnov now faces a maximum of 35 years behind bars.
The special counsel’s office and the defense team, however, agreed that both sides will request somewhere between four and six years in federal prison, along with one year of supervised release after the fact, and $675,000 in restitution.
Smirnov’s eventual sentence will also be shortened by the length of time he spent in pretrial detention, the plea agreement says.
A sentencing hearing will be slated within 30 days of the defendant’s formal guilty plea before the court, according to the document.
Both parties requested sentencing not occur before Jan. 8, 2025.
