Former FBI Informant Who Pleaded Guilty to Making Up Biden Story Sentenced to 6 Years

Alexander Smirnov speaks in court in Los Angeles on Feb. 26, 2024. William T. Robles via AP

The former FBI informant who pleaded guilty to making up a story about President Joe Biden and his son accepting bribes was sentenced on Jan. 8 to six years in prison.

U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II handed down the sentence to Alexander Smirnov, the ex-informant, in a federal courtroom in Los Angeles, according to a court document.

Smirnov, a dual United States and Israeli citizen, changed his plea to guilty in December 2024, admitting to creating a false and fictitious record and failing to pay taxes on approximately $2 million in income.

Smirnov faced up to 35 years in prison. Under a plea agreement, prosecutors and Smirnov agreed that, based on sentencing factors, he should receive a sentence of at least four and no more than six years in prison, followed by one year of supervised release. Prosecutors asked for a six-year sentence. Smirnov’s lawyers requested four years, saying their client is remorseful and accepts responsibility for what he did.

Smirnov, while an FBI informant, provided false information to the FBI about Biden, dubbed public official 1, and his son, Hunter Biden, according to court documents. That included telling his handler that during meetings in 2015 or 2016 with executives of Burisma Holdings, the executives told him that they bribed the elder and younger Biden in exchange for taking care of a criminal investigation that had been probing Burisma.

At the time, Burisma employed Hunter Biden.

“The events Defendant first reported to the Handler in June 2020 were fabrications,” Smirnov’s indictment, which was attached to the plea agreement, stated. “The 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.”

Smirnov repeated some of his false claims when he met with FBI agents in 2023.

“In committing his crimes he betrayed the United States, a country that showed him nothing but generosity, including conferring on him the greatest honor it can bestow, citizenship,” Justice Department special counsel David Weiss’s lawyers wrote in court papers. “He repaid the trust the United States placed in him to be a law-abiding naturalized citizen and, more specifically, that one of its premier law enforcement agencies placed in him to tell the truth as a confidential human source, by attempting to interfere in a Presidential election.”

The FBI document detailing the allegations was made public in 2024, helping propel an impeachment effort against President Biden that ultimately did not succeed.

“Mr. Smirnov has learned a very grave lesson and proffers to this Honorable Court that he will not find himself on this side of the law again,” attorneys Richard Schonfeld and David Chesnoff told the judge in court papers.