Biden claims arrested FBI informant is lying about Biden family bribes in Ukraine

Following the arrest of a former FBI informant over allegations of that he was lying when he said that President Joe Biden was bribed by Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma, Biden said in a press conference said the impeachment inquiry against himself should be dropped.

"An FBI informant at the center of the impeachment inquiry into you has been indicted for allegedly lying ...  Should the inquiry be dropped?" One reporter asked on Friday.

"He is lying. It should be dropped," Biden responded. "And it's just been a it's been an outrageous effort from the beginning."

Alexander Smirnov, 43, was arrested on Thursday at the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas.

Smirnov has been accused in the indictment from special counsel David Weiss that his story to the FBI "was a fabrication, an amalgam of otherwise unremarkable business meetings and contacts that had actually occurred but at a later date than he claimed and for the purpose of pitching Burisma on the Defendant’s services and products, not for discussing bribes to [Joe Biden] when he was in office."

The informant provided testimony to the House GOP and their investigation into the Biden family's alleged illegal foreign business dealings. Smirnov claimed that Burisma executives paid Biden and his son Hunter Biden $5 million each to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired who had been investigating Burisma at the time. 

The indictment states, "In truth and fact, the 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 [Joe Biden] had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office."

"In short, the Defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden], the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against [Joe Biden] and his candidacy," it continues.