Trump helped Biden and his son achieve important legal victory
The son of the current President of the U.S., Hunter Biden (photo: Getty Images)
Joe Biden and his son Hunter have achieved a significant legal victory thanks to special prosecutor David Weiss, appointed by Donald Trump during his presidency. Weiss deemed the testimony of one of the figures in the case against the son of the current U.S. president to be false, according to Newsweek.
David Weiss, who was appointed to lead the investigation into Hunter Biden by Attorney General Merrick Garland, announced charges against 43-year-old FBI informant Alexander Smirnov on Thursday for allegedly making false statements and manufacturing false records concerning Biden's business dealings in Ukraine.
Before leading the Biden investigation, Weiss was appointed as a U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware by Trump. The former president has been among the loudest Republican voices calling for repercussions against the current president and his son for alleged corrupt business dealings in Ukraine.
Smirnov's statement that Joe Biden received a bribe, which he made as a confidential source of information for the FBI, was at the center of the impeachment investigation Republicans launched in the House of Representatives in 2023. The charges brought against Smirnov by Weiss may thwart attempts to impeach the current American president.
In a press release published on Thursday, Weiss announced that a federal grand jury had charged Smirnov with criminal offenses for making false statements and creating false and fictitious records. The maximum penalty for this is imprisonment for up to 25 years.
The indictment states that Smirnov's statements to the FBI in June 2020, alleging that executives of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Biden $5 million each in exchange for the services of the then-Vice President, were fabrications.
"The defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden] after expressing bias against [Biden] and his presidential candidacy," Weiss' release states.
The document also emphasizes that when Smirnov was questioned by FBI agents in September 2023, he repeated some of his false claims, changed his story about other claims, and advanced a new false narrative after saying he had met with Russian officials.
Hunter Biden's case
President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, pleaded guilty in June 2023 to two tax violations and reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors on charges of committing a criminal offense involving the use of a firearm.
In October, Hunter did not plead guilty to three federal charges of firearm possession. According to investigators, in 2018 he bought a gun with false documents.
On December 8, prosecutors brought new charges against Biden's son for failure to pay taxes on nine counts. According to the investigation, Hunter did not pay taxes amounting to at least $1.4 million from 2016 to 2019. The indictment was filed in the Central District Court of California.
Joe Biden's son appeared in a California court on January 11 on nine charges.
