Hunter Biden has accused Israeli intelligence of orchestrating a bogus bribery claim against his father, President Joe Biden, in a surprising interview with conservative commentator Candace Owens. The 56-year-old alleged that the claim, which became central to the 2023 Republican impeachment inquiry, was part of a Mossad-linked scheme.
Key Allegations
Hunter Biden claimed that disgraced FBI informant Alexander Smirnov is a known Israeli intelligence agent and that fugitive arms dealer Gal Luft is hiding in Israel under government protection. He stated, "They're the two principal individuals that made the only claim that people hung their hat on in Congress and elsewhere as it relates to my dad and corruption, bribery, and stuff like that."
Smirnov was sentenced to six years in prison in January 2025 for fabricating claims that Ukrainian gas company Burisma paid Joe and Hunter Biden $5 million each. Hunter alleged that Smirnov has mysteriously vanished from federal prison, saying, "He is on furlough but no one knows where he's been furloughed to and the only passport that he has is an Israeli passport."
Gal Luft's Role
Luft, a dual US-Israeli citizen, was indicted in 2022 on charges of acting as a Chinese foreign agent and brokering deals for illicit weapons and sanctioned Iranian oil. He was arrested in Cyprus in February 2023 but fled while on bail and remains a fugitive. Hunter claimed Israel is shielding him, stating, "Luft, who was a former IDF officer believed to be living in Israel as a fugitive, whom the Israelis will not help us locate."
Personal Confessions
The interview also included Hunter Biden's candid remarks about his struggle with crack addiction. He described it as a slow-motion suicide attempt designed to inflict maximum pain on his family. "I was a coward. I didn't go and just do it. I said, 'Let me do it this way and really really really drag everybody down with me along the way. Let me figure out the way not only to kill myself, but to maybe kill my dad, you know, really hurt my family,'" he told Owens.
Political Context
Hunter Biden became a top target for Donald Trump after the so-called "laptop from hell" surfaced in October 2020, just weeks before the general election. The laptop contained text messages and photos showing Hunter smoking crack and posing nude with prostitutes. Conservatives viewed this as evidence of corruption, while intelligence officials and Democrats dismissed it as Russian disinformation at the time. Twitter and Facebook suppressed the story, fueling Republican outrage and doubts about the election's legitimacy.
Hunter's appointment to Burisma's board in 2014, a position that paid $50,000 a month for five years despite his lack of energy sector experience, has also drawn scrutiny. However, no evidence has emerged that Joe Biden ever accepted bribes. Smirnov, an FBI informant for over a decade, told investigators that Russian intelligence agents were involved in supplying the story about the Bidens, claiming that a hotel where Hunter stayed in Kyiv was wiretapped and under Moscow's control.
