The former FBI informant who was charged with providing false information to agents about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign is scheduled to face trial in April.
Alexander Smirnov, 43, will face a jury trial on April 23 before U.S. District Judge Otis Wright in Los Angeles, according to the court docket. At a hearing on Monday, the judge ordered that Smirnov be held until trial.
Federal prosecutors charged Smirnov earlier this month with making false statements and creating a false and fictitious record. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. They alleged in the indictment that he provided “false derogatory information to the FBI” about the Bidens, including promoting during an interview with FBI agents in September 2023 “a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials.”
In a filing last week, prosecutors wrote that some information that Smirnov had shared about the Bidens came from “officials associated with Russian intelligence.” They added that Smirnov “is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.”
Some of the false claims Smirnov told the FBI involved that executives associated with Ukrainian energy company Burisma, where Hunter Biden had worked, had paid the Bidens $5 million each. Smirnov said that a Burisma official said it would take 10 years for investigators to locate “illicit payments” to President Biden, according to the indictment.
House Republicans have based their impeachment inquiry into the president on information Smirnov provided the FBI, though they have downplayed the charges against Smirnov.
In Los Angeles last week, Smirnov was rearrested on the charges after a federal judge in Las Vegas ordered that he could be released with a GPS monitor. Prosecutors, however, had warned that Smirnov was a flight risk and “likely” to leave the U.S.
Smirnov was initially arrest on the charges at an airport in Las Vegas after arriving on an international flight.
Sarah Fitzpatrick and Ryan J. Reilly contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
