Re: FBI informant charged with lying about Joe and Hunter Biden's ties to Ukrainian energy company

[Lying Hillary Clinton]

On 13 Mar 2022, Molly Bolt <mollyth...@gmail.com> posted some
news:cd982b1d-611c-4a06...@googlegroups.com:

> Hillary Clinton lies, destroyed evidence, constructed a libelous
> dossier of complete falsehoods, and doesn't serve a single day of
> paying for her sins.

WASHINGTON (AP) — An FBI informant has been charged with fabricating a
multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden, his son
Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company, a claim that is central to the
Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.

Alexander Smirnov falsely reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives
associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe
Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016, prosecutors said in an indictment.
Smirnov told his handler that an executive claimed to have hired Hunter
Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems,”
according to court documents.

Prosecutors say Smirnov in fact had only routine business dealings with
the company in 2017 and made the bribery allegations after he “expressed
bias” against Joe Biden while he was a presidential candidate.

Smirnov, 43, appeared in court in Las Vegas briefly Thursday after being
charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious
record. He did not enter a plea. The judge ordered the courtroom cleared
after federal public defender Margaret Wightman Lambrose requested a
closed hearing for arguments about sealing court documents. She declined
to comment on the case.

The informant’s claims have been central to the Republican effort in
Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark
what is now a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. An attorney for Hunter
Biden, who is expected to give a deposition later this month, said the
charges show the probe is “based on dishonest, uncredible allegations and
witnesses.”

The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin of
Maryland, called for an end to the Biden impeachment inquiry.

Raskin said the allegations from the Republicans against Biden “have
always been a tissue of lies built on conspiracy theories.” He called on
Speaker Mike Johnson, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and House
Republicans “to stop promoting this nonsense and end their doomed
impeachment inquiry.”

Comer, R-Ky., downplayed the importance of the informant, who had figured
centrally to the start of the probe.

“To be clear, the impeachment inquiry is not reliant on the FBI’s FD-
1023,” Comer said in a statement, referring to the form documenting
Smirnov’s allegations.

The chairman said the inquiry “is based on a large record of evidence,
including bank records and witness testimony,” including interviews this
week. He said the committee will continue to “follow the facts” and
determine whether to proceed with articles of impeachment against Biden.

In the indictment, prosecutors say that Smirnov had contact with Burisma
executives, but it was routine and actually took place took place in 2017,
after President Barack Obama and Biden, his vice president, had left
office — when Biden would have had no ability to influence U.S. policy.

Smirnov “transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts
with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against Public
Official 1, the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political
parties for President, after expressing bias against Public Official 1 and
his candidacy,” the indictment said.

He repeated some of the false claims when he was interviewed by FBI agents
in September 2023 and changed his story about others and “promoted a new
false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials,” prosecutors
said.

If convicted, Smirnov faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.

The charges were filed by Justice Department special counsel David Weiss,
who has separately charged Hunter Biden with firearm and tax violations.

The Burisma allegations became a flashpoint in Congress as Republicans
pursing investigations of President Joe Biden and his family demanded the
FBI release the unredacted form documenting the allegations. They
acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if the allegations were true.

Comer had subpoenaed the FBI last year for the so-called FD-1023 document
as Republicans deepened their probe of Biden and his son Hunter ahead of
the 2024 presidential election.

Working alongside Comer, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa released
an unclassified document that Republicans at the time claimed was
significant in their investigation of Hunter Biden. It added to
information that had been widely aired during Donald Trump’s first
impeachment trial involving Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to dig
up dirt on the Bidens ahead of the 2020 election. After Grassley released
the document, the White House said the claims in it had been “debunked for
years.”

The impeachment inquiry into Biden over his son’s business dealings has
lagged in the House, but the panel is pushing ahead with its work.

Hunter Biden is expected to appear before the committee later this month.
His attorney, Abbe Lowell, said he had long warned the probe was based on
“lies told by people with political agendas, not facts. We were right and
the air is out of their balloon.”

A judge set a detention hearing for Feb. 20 for Smirnov, who was arrested
at the Las Vegas airport after arriving in the U.S. from overseas.

https://ktla.com/news/politics/ap-politics/ap-fbi-informant-charged-with-
lying-about-joe-and-hunter-bidens-ties-to-ukrainian-energy-company/