Hearing set for ex-FBI informant who lied about Biden bribery scheme

Noble Brigham, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Apr 28, 2025

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LOS ANGELES — A federal judge is scheduled to hold a bail hearing Monday afternoon after federal prosecutors and defense attorneys moved for the release, pending an appeal, of a former FBI informant who lied about a bribery scheme involving the Biden family and a Ukrainian company.

Alexander Smirnov, 45, was sentenced to six years in prison by U.S. District Judge Otis Wright II in January after he admitted he falsely told the FBI that executives at Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid former President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden $5 million each.

Those claims became key to an impeachment inquiry by congressional Republicans.

Smirnov lived in a Las Vegas condominium before his arrest at Harry Reid International Airport in February 2024 after he returned from an overseas trip.

He is supposed to be released in 2029, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons records.

But in a stipulation filed earlier this month, federal prosecutors and Smirnov’s attorneys, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, agreed Smirnov should be released while he appeals his sentence. He has a “chronic eye disease” and releasing him “will permit him to travel to California to obtain treatment for his eye condition,” they said.

Chesnoff and Schonfeld are appealing Wright’s “refusal” to include in an order that Smirnov would receive credit for the time he spent in pretrial detention, even though his plea deal specified the previous time he served would be applied to the sentence.

The stipulation suggested multiple shifts in the federal government’s view of the case.

It included a hint prosecutors may be reconsidering the prosecution. “The United States intends to review the government’s theory of the case underlying Defendant’s criminal conviction,” the document said.

That would be a change for prosecutors, who previously called Smirnov “a liar and a tax cheat” who “betrayed the United States.”

The attorneys also wrote that Smirnov was not a flight risk and proposed that Smirnov’s travel should be restricted to Nevada and San Francisco, where his doctor is located.

Federal prosecutors previously said Smirnov was a flight risk with ties to Russian intelligence.

Wright had ordered Smirnov to be detained before trial after a Nevada federal judge ordered his release. Wright wrote that defense attorneys were trying to get Smirnov released, “likely to facilitate his absconding from the United States.”

At the time, Chesnoff and Schonfeld said, “The suggestion that defense counsel is participating in an unlawful plot by advocating for release … is wrong.”

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