Federal prosecutors agree to release man who lied about Biden bribes pending appeal

Federal prosecutors and defense attorneys have agreed that a man who admitted to lying to authorities about a bribery scheme involving the Biden family and a Ukrainian energy company should be released while he appeals his sentence.

Alexander Smirnov, 44, who had lived in a Las Vegas condominium before his arrest, was ordered to spend six years in prison by a federal judge in January after pleading guilty to one charge of causing a false and fictitious record in a federal investigation and three counts of tax evasion in December.

Smirnov, a former FBI informant, 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 a focal point of an impeachment inquiry by congressional Republicans.

In a stipulation filed Thursday, federal prosecutors and Smirnov’s attorneys, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, said Smirnov has a “chronic eye disease” and releasing him “will permit him to travel to California to obtain treatment for his eye condition.”

The filing also 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 shift for prosecutors, who previously described Smirnov as “a liar and a tax cheat” who “betrayed the United States.”

Smirnov’s offenses were nonviolent and he is not a flight risk, the attorneys wrote in the new filing. They 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.

Chesnoff declined to comment.

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office for the central district of California also declined to comment.

A judge must approve the agreement before Smirnov can be released.

U.S. District Judge Otis Wright II, who has overseen the case, ordered Smirnov to remain behind bars in February 2024 as the case moved forward, reversing a ruling from a Las Vegas judge.

Wright also made comments at the sentencing indicating he didn’t agree with the plea deal Smirnov made.

“I held my nose and agreed to accept that deal and apply the top end of that range,” which was four to six years in prison, he said at the time.

Weeks after the sentencing, Chesnoff and Schonfeld said they were 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.

Wright had said he didn’t want to get involved in calculating Smirnov’s credits. “He is entitled to credits as earned,” the judge said at the end of Smirnov’s sentencing.

Court records show Leo Wise, the federal prosecutor who argued at Smirnov’s sentencing hearing, and other federal prosecutors were terminated from the case on Thursday.

Wise had worked with Justice Department special counsel David Weiss, who separately charged Hunter Biden with firearm and tax violations.

Hunter Biden was ultimately pardoned by his father.

Smirnov’s case is now assigned to Assistant U.S. Attorney David Friedman, who signed onto the stipulation for release.

Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.