President Joe Biden said Friday that House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into him should be dropped after the Department of Justice (DOJ) charged an FBI informant who provided details about an alleged bribery scheme between the president, his son and a Ukrainian energy company.
Special counsel David Weiss indicted Alexander Smirnov on Thursday on one count of making a false statement and one count of creating a false and fictitious record. Smirnov was a confidential human source (CHS) who in 2020 alerted the FBI about an alleged corruption scheme between Burisma, Hunter Biden and his father. Biden reacted to the news Friday after giving a speech about the reported death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
“An FBI informant at the center of the impeachment inquiry into you has been indicted for allegedly lying. Your reaction to that and should the inquiry be dropped?”
“He is lying and it should be dropped and it’s just been an — it’s been an outrageous effort from the beginning. [inaudible],” Biden responded.
The DOJ’s indictment suggests that Smirnov’s only contact with Burisma executives was in 2017, after Biden was no longer vice president. The Ukrainian investigator probing Burisma had lost his job prior to Smirnov’s contact with the company, according to the indictment.
Smirnov previously alerted the FBI in 2020 that the executives of the Ukrainian company had let him know in 2015 and 2016 that they had hired Hunter Biden onto the company’s board so he could “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.” At the time, Biden was vice president in the Obama administration, leading Ukraine policy and had at one point bragged that he got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired.
The informant continued to allege that Burisma executives paid each Hunter Biden and his dad approximately $5 million so the first son could “take care of all those issues through his dad.”
The House approved an impeachment inquiry into Biden in December 2023 after former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced a formal inquiry. Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer is leading the inquiry into Biden, previously arguing in a press release that there is a “mountain of evidence” that lays out how Biden used his position in office to benefit his family financially. (RELATED: Majority Of Voters Want Biden Investigated Or Impeached: POLL)