The former FBI informant who accused President Joe Biden and his son Hunter of snatching millions of dollars in bribes from Ukrainian energy company Burisma has admitted the whole story was a dud.

In a plea deal, Alexander Smirnov admitted to completely fabricating the conspiracy at the heart of Republican efforts to impeach the sitting president. According to court documents, Smirnov agreed to plead guilty to four counts, including one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of tax evasion, in exchange for the dismissal of two pending criminal cases against him.

In June 2020, Smirnov falsely reported to the FBI that Burisma executives had paid Biden and his son millions of dollars. The bogus claim was part of a larger series of unsubstantiated accusations accusing Biden of improperly using his position as (then) vice president to impede a corruption investigation into Burisma, where Hunter sat on the board. The fraudulent story also sparked a surprise in the 2020 election in October over Hunter Biden’s laptop, which Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon said contained evidence that Biden and a Burisma adviser had held a “meeting.” (The New York Post, which published the original story on its front page, later said that the laptop’s contents were mixed with fake material and that most of the data could not be verified.)

Smirnov faces two to six years in prison for falsifying the story, although Donald Trump may commute his sentence or pardon the conservative witness outright once he returns to the White House.

In February, the Justice Department announced that Smirnov admitted to prosecutors that “officials associated with Russian intelligence” had been involved in developing the Hunter Biden narrative.

In the ensuing dispute over the DOJ’s indictment, Smirnov told investigators that he was in contact with “four different (top) Russian officials,” two of whom were the “heads of the units they represented.”

Republicans had spent months building up the hype around Smirnov as a witness, isolating his claim that Biden pocketed millions of dollars from the Ukrainian company as the centerpiece of their investigation. But in the end, Smirnov’s false narrative — and his ability to entrap and influence overzealous and power-hungry U.S. politicians — was just another example of how effectively the Russian government can infiltrate and undermine U.S. elections.

“It targeted the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties in the United States. The impact of Smirnov’s false statements and falsified information continues to be felt today,” prosecutors wrote earlier this year.