A former FBI informant and Biden impeachment inquiry witness has been charged with lying about the president and his son Hunter Biden’s involvement in business dealings with Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
The ex-informant, Alexander Smirnov, has also been charged with creating false records.
If convicted, he could face up to 25 years in prison.
Smirnov, 43, was arrested Thursday at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas.
His story to the FBI was integral to congressional Republicans’ effort to impeach President Joe Biden for benefitting financially from his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
However, the indictment states Smirnov’s claims were “a fabrication, an amalgam of otherwise unremarkable business meetings and contacts.”
One of the claims was that an executive at Burisma told Smirnov that the company hired Hunter Biden so he could have the ear of his father and keep the business out of any trouble. He also allegedly reported that Burisma paid $5 million each to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden while the elder was vice president so that Hunter would “take care of all those issues through his dad.”
A prominent aspect of the impeachment inquiry is that as vice president, Biden forced the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor who was leading a criminal investigation of Burisma.
“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,” the indictment states.
After the charges were announced, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) called for the inquiry to end. However, House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) told CNN in a statement that the investigation was not based on Smirnov’s claims.