It’s already water gone. Joe Biden is preparing to leave the White House. Hunter Biden has been pardoned by his father for any crime he may have committed since 2014. This Thursday, however, it was confirmed that the testimony that helped spread the shadow of corruption over the Bidens was false. Alexander Smirnov, the confidant who told the FBI that the president and his son had allegedly collected kickbacks from business dealings in Ukraine, has agreed to plead guilty to obstruction of justice for his lies. The motivation for his lie was political.
Republicans used these accusations in the 2020 election campaign. Then, after gaining the majority in the House of Representatives two years ago, they investigated these allegations in a commission. They never found any proof of their accusations, but they tried to promote a political process (impeachment) against Biden to weaken him politically when he was still running for re-election. Then, when Smirnov was accused of his falsehoods, they put the matter aside, which also lost all significance when Biden stopped being the Democratic candidate and passed the baton to Kamala Harris.
The crimes committed by Hunter Biden, for the illegal purchase and possession of a weapon and for tax evasion, are not related to the corruption accusations, but it was these that led to the appointment of a special prosecutor to scrutinize the actions of the president’s son during the last few years. These investigations ended with a jury finding guilty in one case and the admission of the facts in another, for crimes that usually do not go to trial or receive light sentences. Hunter did not learn his sentence, since his father pardoned him earlier.
The agreement to plead guilty was announced this Thursday in a court document. “Despite repeated warnings to provide truthful information to the FBI and not to fabricate evidence, the defendant provided false defamatory information to the FBI about Public Official 1 [Joe Biden]an elected official of the Obama-Biden Administration who left office in January 2017, and Businessman 1 [Hunter Biden]the son of Public Official 1, in 2020, after Public Official 1 became a candidate for the presidency of the United States of America,” the account of the events states.
Smirnov told the FBI that Biden had collected a $5 million commission from the Ukrainian firm Burisma when he was Barack Obama’s vice president. Although the investigators did not find any evidence that gave credibility to the accusation, the confidant’s contact recorded the accusation in a report, the form called FD-1023.
The confidant transformed his routine business contacts with the Ukrainian company Burisma – of which Hunter Biden was an advisor – into baseless bribery accusations against the Bidens. He changed his version of events, entering into contradictions and lying to artificially fabricate a scandal.
Republicans considered his performance heroic and clung to his statement like a straw to try for years to accuse Biden of corruption. With the indictment of Smirnov for false testimony, his house of cards collapsed, but Hunter Biden’s particular crimes served to continue politically fueling the case.
Smirnov not only pleads guilty to his falsehoods, but also admits tax crimes. The court document indicates that he received more than $2.3 million from unidentified sources between 2020 and 2022, while he launched his accusations.
The confidant bought a $1.4 million apartment in Las Vegas, a Bentley, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on clothes and jewelry in luxury stores in Las Vegas and Los Angeles with the money he received in those three years. In the document it is not clear whether it was a payment for his services as a false informant, but he did not declare the taxes that corresponded to him, so he also admits three tax crimes. Prosecutors said Smirnov had ties to Russian intelligence.
The maximum penalties for the crimes he committed were 35 years in prison, three years of probation, and a fine of at least one million dollars. However, under the agreement and the guidelines of the Department of Justice, the document indicates that he will be sentenced to four to six years in prison, one year of probation and restitution of $675,000 in unpaid taxes. The agreement must be approved by a federal judge.
