Information Pleads Guilty to Lying About $10 Million Payment to Biden

Republicans are about to take a pretty tough shot to the jaw.

The informant that alleged Biden was paid a $10 million bribe has pleaded guilty to lying about his allegations.

Grassley Has Egg on His Face

I remember seeing this report when Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a major Trump supporter in the Senate, published the report for all to see.

In that report, a course claimed that Mykola Zlochevsky, the chief executive of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm that hired Hunter Biden as a board member in 2013, had paid Joe and Hunter Biden $5 million each, for a total of $10 million, for firing Ukrainian prosecutor named Viktor Shokin.

The report was dismissed by agents as not being reliable, even though the informant had been used in prior cases and offered up reliable information. Grassley, who had been very critical in the past of having raw intelligence published, published the FD-1023 report that showed the informant’s statements.

The White House immediately pushed back on the report, stating, "It is remarkable that congressional Republicans, in their eagerness to go after President Biden regardless of the truth, continue to push claims that have been debunked for year.

“It's clear that congressional Republicans are dead-set on playing shameless, dishonest politics and refuse to let truth get in the way.”

Time and Money

Significant time and money were spent investigating this claim, even though the report had already been vetted by agents and was found to be unreliable.

All the while, however, the GOP concentrated on the fact this informant had been used before, so why were agents questioning his information this time around? That, of course, led to all the right-wing publications pouncing on the story.

This was a significant misstep by Republicans, especially Grassley, who should know better. And now this is all blowing up in his face.

Guilty

Former FBI source Alexander Smirnov, the source of the $10 million claim, pleaded out his case this week, reaching a deal with Special Counsel David Weiss.

In addition to pleading guilty to tax evasion, he pleaded guilty to "Count Two of the indictment in United States v. Alexander Smirnov … which charges defendant with causing the creation of a false and fictitious record in a federal investigation.”

The statement of facts added, "The events Defendant first reported to the Handler in June 2020 were fabrications. In truth and fact, Defendant had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016 — in other words, when Public Official 1 could not engage in any official act to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office.”

I have been extremely critical of people like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) for lying to the American people, so I would be a hypocrite if I did not call out Grassley (and for that matter. Rep. Comey, who also pushed the narrative) for releasing information to the public without it being properly vetted. This just helps feed the Democrat narrative that Biden never did anything wrong. Grassley set us back significantly here, and he must be held accountable.