WASHINGTON — A former informant for the FBI, Alexander Smirnov, has been indicted on federal tax charges, adding another layer of legal troubles for him amid previous accusations of orchestrating a phony bribery conspiracy linked to President Joe Biden’s family.
This latest indictment was revealed in a California federal court this week, coming several months after Smirnov was initially arrested for supposedly fabricating a bribery scheme involving President Biden, his son Hunter, and a Ukrainian energy firm.
The charges, filed by special counsel David Weiss, include tax evasion and the submission of fraudulent tax returns. The indictment claims that Smirnov hid millions of dollars in income that he earned over the span of 2020 to 2022.
In response, Smirnov’s legal representatives, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, expressed in an email that their client plans to “vigorously contest these allegations with the same intensity he has applied to the original indictment.”
Regarding the previous indictment, Smirnov’s trial date has been rescheduled to January 8. He has steadfastly refuted the bribery claims made against him.
According to prosecutors, Smirnov misled the FBI in June 2020, alleging that executives from Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company, had paid both Hunter Biden and his father, Joe Biden, $5 million each during 2015 or 2016. Court documents reveal that Smirnov stated an executive claimed to have engaged Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”
Prosecutors further assert that Smirnov’s actual interactions with Burisma were limited to standard business dealings in 2017, positing that the bribery claims emerged after he exhibited bias against Joe Biden during the latter’s presidential campaign.
Simultaneously, Hunter Biden is set to be sentenced next month as he faces allegations in two distinct criminal cases. He is accused of trying to evade over $1.4 million in taxes and of providing false information on a federal questionnaire when he purchased a firearm in 2018.