US-Israeli ex-FBI informant set to plead guilty to inventing Biden Burisma claims

A dual US-Israeli national who was once an FBI informant is set to plead guilty later today to lying about a phony bribery scheme involving US President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.

Alexander Smirnov is expected to make the plea in Los Angeles to a felony charge in connection with the bogus story, along with a tax evasion charge stemming from a separate indictment accusing him of concealing millions of dollars of income, according to court papers.

Smirnov has been behind bars since his arrest in February on charges that he told his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid President Biden and Hunter Biden $5 million each around 2015.

Prosecutors and the defense have agreed to recommend a sentence of between four and six years in prison, according to the plea agreement.

Smirnov holds both Israeli and US citizenship and lived in Israel for more than a decade, later moving to Los Angeles and finally Las Vegas in 2022, prosecutors have said.

While his identity wasn’t publicly known before the indictment, Smirnov’s claims about the Bidens played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark a House impeachment inquiry into Biden.

Before Smirnov’s arrest, Republicans had demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if they were true.