President Joe Biden called Friday for the House to shut down its impeachment inquiry into alleged influence peddling after the indictment of an FBI informant who said Biden might have accepted $5 million in bribes while vice president.
Special counsel David Weiss, appointed to investigate the financial activities of the president's son, Hunter Biden, secured a grand jury indictment against Alexander Smirnov, alleging that he lied to the FBI. Smirnov faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
Business associates of the Biden family have said that Joe Biden, mostly while vice president, was "The brand" in doing business in foreign countries.
A Justice Department press release says: "Smirnov provided false derogatory information to the FBI about Public Official 1, and Businessperson 1, the son of Public Official 1, in 2020, after Public Official 1 became a presidential candidate." The release talks about the FBI informant's discussion with executives from Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that named Hunter Biden to its board at a hefty salary.
The informant told FBI officials he learned of a $5 million bribe to be paid to Hunter Biden and $5 million to then-Vice President Joe Biden in 2016 to pull strings to avoid a prosecution of Burisma in Ukraine.
The informant asserted that Burisma officials told him the money couldn't be tracked because of various Biden family shell companies.
The indictment of Smirnov alleges: "Defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against Public Official 1, the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against Public Official 1 and his candidacy." In July, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released the bribery allegation against Biden in a four-page FBI document, called an FD-1023, that he obtained through a Justice Department whistleblower.
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