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Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Special counsel David Weiss on Thursday charged an FBI informant with felony false statement and obstruction charges for allegedly lying about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden's involvement in Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings. Weiss charged Alexander Smirnov, 43, with one count of making a false statement and one count of creating a false and fictitious record regarding statements he made to the FBI after Biden became president in 2020.
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Smirnov was arrested Wednesday at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas after arriving to the United States from overseas, according to the Justice Department.
He was scheduled to make his first appearance in federal court Thursday. He faces a maximum of 25 years in prison if convicted.
According to the indictment, Smirnov told an FBI agent in March 2017 that he had a phone call with the owner of Burisma and noted Hunter Biden at the time was a member of the Burisma board.
Three years later, during Joe Biden's run for president, Smirnov allegedly fabricated two stories in which Burisma leaders in 2015 and 2016 told him they hired Hunter Biden to "protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems."
He also claimed executives paid Hunter and Joe Biden each $5 million while Joe Biden was vice president, so his son could "take care of all those issues through his dad," referring to criminal investigations into Burisma at the time by the then-Ukrainian prosecutor general.
Weiss alleged Smirnov, however, had only contacted Burisma executives in 2017 after Biden was no longer vice president and after the Ukrainian prosecutor general had already been fired.
"In other words, when [Joe Biden] had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the prosecutor general was no longer in office," according to the indictment.
"The defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden], the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for president, after expressing bias against [Joe Biden] and his candidacy," the indictment read.
FBI agents interviewed Smirnov again in September 2023, during which he allegedly repeated earlier false claims and changed his story to promote "a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials," according to the report.
Smirnov's indictment is blow against congressional Republicans, who have long leaned on his now-discredited testimony for their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
When he launched the impeachment inquiry in September, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said "a trusted FBI informant has alleged a bribe to the Biden family."
GOP leaders had fought with the FBI to obtain memos of what Smirnov told investigators and publicly released the documents despite the FBI's objections.
The FBI now is using those same memos Republicans released as part of its indictment against Smirnov.
