CNN
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The Justice Department will review its case against a former FBI informant who was convicted of lying about the Biden family’s ties to Ukraine, prosecutors said in a court filing Thursday.
Alexander Smirnov was sentenced to six years in prison for falsely telling FBI agents in 2020 that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden had taken a $10 million bribe from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Smirnov’s story became central to the Republican-led effort to impeach then-President Biden.
Smirnov’s conviction on four federal charges was part of special counsel David Weiss’ investigation into Hunter Biden and related matters.
Prosecutor David Friedman gave little information in a court filing about what the review will entail and why it is being undertaken, writing only that “the United States intends to review the government’s theory of the case underlying Defendant’s criminal conviction.”
Friedman also asked the judge who oversaw the case to release Smirnov while he works through the appeals process, citing long-held complaints that he wasn’t getting adequate medical attention while in prison.
Born in the Soviet Union, Smirnov and his family immigrated to Israel as a child, and he later moved to the United States. He became a naturalized citizen and a prized informant for the FBI. But according to prosecutors, he invented the Ukraine bribery narrative to hurt Biden’s 2020 campaign against Trump.
The Justice Department secretly probed Smirnov’s allegations in 2020, but nothing came of it. Three years later, during the run-up to the 2024 campaign, congressional Republicans brought national attention to Smirnov’s unproven allegations and touted his record as an FBI informant. Their claims quickly went viral in the right-wing media ecosystem.
Amid that GOP scrutiny, Weiss’ team re-interviewed Smirnov in 2023 to vet his allegations as they also investigated Hunter Biden. But Weiss concluded Smirnov “was lying” and “should be prosecuted himself” for repeatedly deceiving the FBI, prosecutors said in filings.
CNN’s Marshall Cohen contributed to this report.