The 56-year-old alleged his father was the victim of a Mossad-linked scheme that fueled the 2023 Republican impeachment inquiry, in a surprise sit-down with the conservative firebrand who spent years mocking him as a 'crackhead.' 

He alleged that disgraced FBI informant Alexander Smirnov is 'a known Israeli intelligence agent' and that fugitive alleged arms dealer Gal Luft is hiding in Israel under government protection.  

'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,' Hunter told Owens. 

He claimed that Smirnov has now mysteriously vanished from federal prison. 

'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,' Hunter said. 

Smirnov, 44, was jailed for six years in January, 2025, for fabricating the claim that bosses at Ukrainian gas company Burisma paid Joe and Hunter $5 million each.

It became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry into the then-president. 

Luft, a 57-year-old dual US-Israeli citizen, was indicted by the Southern District of New York in 2022 on charges of acting as a Chinese foreign agent, brokering deals for illicit weapons and sanctioned Iranian oil.

He was arrested in Cyprus in February 2023 and fled while on bail. He remains a fugitive.

Hunter claimed Israel is shielding the alleged gun runner. 

'Luft, who was a former IDF officer who is believed to be living in Israel as a fugitive, who the Israelis will not help us locate,' he told Owens. 

The bombshell came in a wide-ranging interview in which Hunter also confessed his descent into crack addiction was 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,' Hunter told Owens.