Talk:Hunter Biden

Finally time to add a reference to Alexander Smirnov?

1. Here is the first paragraph of a CNN story [1] that was just published (on Jan. 8, 2025):

"The disgraced former FBI informant who falsely accused President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden of taking a $10 million bribe from Ukraine was sentenced Wednesday to six years in federal prison, according to court records."

That informant, Alexander Smirnov, was sentenced to six years in prison. I think it is past time that this Wikipedia article, which includes 15 paragraphs about Hunter Biden's business dealings and 10 paragraphs about his legal troubles before even getting to the subsections about the crimes for which he actually was charged, convicted, and pardoned, adds one whole sentence about Smirnov's false claims about Hunter Biden and his father, Smirnov's admission that he was repeating talking points from Russian intelligence in this article, and the fact that Smirnov pled guilty and was sentenced to prison for that.

At the moment, neither "Smirnov" nor "informant" are mentioned here, but prosecutors working under David Weiss, the Special Counsel who secured a conviction of and guilty plea from Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges, respectively, had requested Smirnov receive a sentence of this length, which they said was warranted in particular because Smirnov's false claims about the Bidens, when later shared with the House Oversight Committee, had led that committee on a wild goose chase. And without that goose chase, those 25 paragraphs I mentioned would probably be less than half as long. In other words, some portion of this lengthy Wikipedia article's very newsworthiness was based on Smirnov's lie.

(And it is quite long: this article on a president's child is more than 70% longer than that for Chelsea Clinton and more than three times longer than that for Beau Biden, who was an actual public official.)

Here is some more from that new CNN story:

"Smirnov's bombshell indictment – and the subsequent public repudiation of his fake bribery claims – helped derail the Republican impeachment push against [President] Biden. Prosecutors hit Smirnov with additional tax charges in November, and with a trial looming, he pleaded guilty last month to causing the creation of a false FBI record, as well as three counts of tax evasion. ...

[Smirnov] became a naturalized citizen and a prized informant for the FBI. But according to prosecutors, he later started expressing bias toward Biden, and invented the Ukraine bribery narrative to hurt Biden’s 2020 campaign against Trump.

The Justice Department secretly probed Smirnov’s allegations in 2020, but nothing came of it. Three years later, during the run-up to the 2024 campaign, congressional Republicans brought national attention to Smirnov’s unproven allegations, and touted his record as an FBI informant. Their claims quickly went viral in the right-wing media ecosystem."

2. On Dec. 17, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the Ranking Member (i.e., top Democrat) on the House Oversight Committee, issued a statement [2] that included the following text:

"Mr. Smirnov’s guilty plea is a stunning indictment of Congressional Republicans who turned three congressional committees into willing mouthpieces for Russian propaganda aimed at undermining the office of the President of the United States. ...

...Republicans were repeatedly warned ... that Russian intelligence agencies were using individuals ... to promote completely fraudulent bribery claims against President Biden. ...

This week, Mr. Smirnov admitted to his outrageous crimes in a court of law. When will my Republican colleagues admit they became unwitting accomplices in a Russian disinformation and influence operation ... [and] commit to stop spreading these sickening and now legally debunked Russian lies in the media?"

3. And here are two passages from an Associated Press story [3] dated Dec. 16:

"While Smirnov’s identity wasn’t publicly known before [his] indictment, his claims played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. Before Smirnov’s arrest, Republicans had demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if they were true.

Smirnov claimed to have contacts with Russian intelligence-affiliated officials, and told authorities after his arrest this year that 'officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story' about Hunter Biden."

[1] link: https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/08/politics/ex-fbi-informant-fake-biden-ukraine-bribery-allegations-alexander-smirnov/index.html

[2] link: https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/ranking-member-raskins-statement-guilty-plea-alexander-smirnov-whose-lies-were

[3] link: https://apnews.com/article/alexander-smirnov-guilty-plea-biden-informant-fbi-62a3b7acce0345303f812ca6d0206b10

(I provide all this to give an editor enough material to work with.) NME Frigate (talk) 01:05, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Why does this article specify that the "pardon cannot be rescinded"?

Such statements do not seem to be a regular part of articles on people who receive presidential pardons. I checked the articles for four people who received pardons from Donald Trump -- Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and Dinesh D'Souza -- and there is no comparable language in those articles. What's the standard that led to that phrase being used here? NME Frigate (talk) 23:21, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

I've removed the whole sentence. This article is about Hunter Biden, not Donald Trump's social media writings. TarnishedPath^talk 05:25, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Should pardon section be split into its own article?

The topic does seem to be quite notable, with its broadness, conflict of interest, rescinding on promises, and bipartisan criticism. Other notable pardons such as Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon and Donald Trump's pardon of January 6th insurrectionists do have their own article. The current length of the topic though isn't too long to not fit in the main article. That being said, more could be added to a new article like a timeline of pardon status (from impossible to being considered) and it being the starting point of Biden's end of term pardons. ✨ΩmegaMantis✨^blather 23:50, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

The section about the pardon is currently quite short; the section about Burisma is a lot longer, yet no one is talking about splitting that. I suggest that the pardon section should be expanded first and then we can discuss splitting the article. Furthermore, the pardon is still very recent, and it will probably be a while before WP:SECONDARY sources emerge to analyze its historical impact. I would rather wait for scholarly analysis than simply regurgitate what politicians, partisan opinion-page pundits, and cable TV talking heads have said about the pardon. Carguychris (talk) 15:04, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I would agree with Carguychris that it isn't sufficient for a split. The tension with the section in this article is that this is the Hunter Biden article, so a lot of detail primarily concerned with Joe Biden such as conflict of interest and rescinding on promises would be off-topic or UNDUE coverage for this page- if anything the existing coverage here already veers a bit off topic to talk about Joe rather than Hunter. The topic itself might be worth a page that covered Joe's actions and decisions in more depth, but I wouldn't support expanding the section here. --Noren (talk) 15:47, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I concur, and I think it's important to draw the fine line and emphasize that this page is about Hunter Biden's actions and things that happened to him (the who and what), and not Joe Biden's actions or the reasoning behind them (the how and why as it relates to the pardon). While a brief summary of the how and why is completely appropriate, a lengthy discussion is WP:UNDUE unless Hunter was directly involved in the decision-making process, and there seems to be little WP:RELIABLE evidence of that. Carguychris (talk) 20:01, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

It seems that the agreement between both of you is that:

-the pardon would not merit its own article

-but should not be overly expanded in this page because it has to do more with Joe Biden than Hunter.

Perhaps if the pardon section merits expansion, it could be done so on a List of people pardoned by Joe Biden article, and then the section on this page would have a Main Page or See Also header to that article. There is currently not such an article, though other presidents do have one. Of course if the topic of Hunter's pardon is proven to be not important in secondary sources given its recency, than such an addition would be moot. ✨ΩmegaMantis✨^blather 21:48, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps if the pardon section merits expansion, it could be done so on a List of people pardoned by Joe Biden article, and then the section on this page would have a Main Page or See Also header to that article. I agree with this suggestion. Carguychris (talk) 13:33, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

I explicitly didn't argue either way and haven't come to a conclusion as to whether the pardon merits its own article. I object to the proposed content expansion because it is Joe Biden-centric, but hypothetically content could be added here if sources further detail actions taken by Hunter related to obtaining or in response to the pardon. I agree that a see also link to a page about Joe Biden's pardons might be apropos. --Noren (talk) 19:39, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

This is not the pardon of a US president or the pardon of 1,500 people who engaged in the first invasion of the US Capitol building since the War of 1812. No. O3000, Ret. (talk) 16:04, 24 February 2025 (UTC)