Disgraced FBI Informant Alexander Smirnov Admits Fabricating $10M Biden Bribery Hoax To Rig Presidential Election

A former FBI informant who admitted inventing a £7.9 million ($10 million) bribery tale against Joe and Hunter Biden is now trying to unwind that very confession, with the backing of Donald Trump's Justice Department.

Alexander Smirnov pleaded guilty in December 2024 to fabricating the explosive claim that became the engine of a Republican impeachment drive against the former president.

A judge handed him six years in prison weeks later. Eighteen months on, he has been quietly let out on furlough while federal prosecutors switch sides to support his appeal.

The Fabricated Burisma Bribery Claim That Fuelled An Impeachment

Smirnov had served as an FBI confidential human source since 2010 when, in June 2020, he told his handler that executives at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid Joe and Hunter Biden £3.9 million ($5 million) each. He claimed the money was meant to shut down a Ukrainian criminal inquiry while Biden was vice-president.

The story was logged on an FBI form known as an FD-1023, which Senator Chuck Grassley later obtained and passed to House Republicans, who made it the centrepiece of their impeachment inquiry. Biden denied any wrongdoing throughout. Republicans had pressed the FBI to release the unredacted FD-1023 even as they admitted they could not confirm whether its contents were true.

Special counsel David Weiss, a prosecutor first appointed under Trump, indicted Smirnov in February 2024, and agents arrested him at the airport in Las Vegas as he returned from abroad. The charging documents stated plainly that the bribery claims 'were false, as the Defendant knew.'

Prosecutors said he had taken 'routine and unextraordinary business contacts' with Burisma from years earlier and twisted them into a corruption narrative. Weiss concluded that the informant had been lying and should be prosecuted himself.

Guilty Pleas, A Russian Disinformation Trail, And A Six-Year Sentence

In December 2024, Smirnov pleaded guilty to causing the creation of a false and fictitious record in a federal investigation, alongside three counts of tax evasion for concealing more than £1.6 million ($2 million) in income.

The binding plea agreement set a sentence of four to six years and roughly £531,000 ($675,000) in restitution to the tax authorities. On 8 January 2025, US District Judge Otis D. Wright II imposed the full six years. The prosecution was a final strand of Weiss's long-running inquiry into Hunter Biden, whom his father pardoned days before Smirnov entered his plea.

Prosecutors did not hold back in their sentencing memorandum. They called Smirnov a 'liar and a tax cheat' who had 'betrayed the United States', and described his false corruption claims as 'among the most serious kinds of election interference one can imagine', having roiled both the 2020 and 2024 campaigns.

Their filings also traced a disinformation trail running through Moscow. When investigators re-interviewed Smirnov in September 2023, he changed parts of his account and 'promoted a new false narrative after meeting with Russian officials', later conceding that some of what he had peddled came from people tied to Russian intelligence.

How Trump's Justice Department Switched Sides

The case took a startling turn once Trump returned to office. After Bill Essayli took charge of the Los Angeles US Attorney's office, the section chief, David Friedman, replaced the original prosecutors and joined Smirnov's lawyers in seeking his release pending appeal, citing a chronic eye condition that had left him losing his sight. Judge Wright rebuffed the about-face from the bench, asking, 'Seriously? At this stage, the government is taking a look at this case anew?'

The pressure has only grown since. On 4 March 2026, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche filed a brief supporting Smirnov's attempt to throw out his sentence and withdraw his guilty plea, a development first reported by Mother Jones' David Corn and followed up by The Wall Street Journal.

A lawyer for Smirnov told the court that the department and his client were now 'in complete agreement'. Legal specialists noted that deputy attorneys general rarely insert themselves into routine post-conviction appeals. The appeal leans on a technicality, namely that the judge never formally granted the credit for time served that the plea deal had promised. Should an appeals court vacate the sentence, the Journal noted, the department could drop the charges altogether and erase his admission that the Biden bribery claims were invented.

Smirnov, meanwhile, has already left his cell. Investigative reporter Jacqueline Sweet found that he had been released on furlough from the low-security prison at Terminal Island near Long Beach within months of arriving, even though Bureau of Prisons records still list him as an inmate with a release date in 2029. A process server and the local sheriff's department were eventually told he had been furloughed, with no forwarding address provided.

Should the courts let him take back his confession, the only person ever punished over the Biden bribery story could walk away with his record wiped clean.