Hunter-Gazi: Giuliani and Russian propaganda scam to help Trump get re-eelcted.

cannabineer said:

One would think the Republicans would be conscious of the fact that an impeachment effort would uncover some of their own dirt.
But, no.

Until our universe jumped its rails and landed us in some strange alternate reality, the DOJ would be as busy as a disturbed hornets’ nest rooting out the corrupt legislators using this bogus impeachment as a distraction from their own high crimes and misdemeanors.
But, no.

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hanimmal said:

https://apnews.com/article/hunter-biden-burisma-fbi-informant-lying-6969656f6012780a23a4b8841ce2689b
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Fox News pundit Sean Hannity aired photographs of lines of light brown powder that appeared in Hunter Biden's newest court filing, accusing the government of mistaking sawdust for cocaine, and demanded to know if the public agreed.

"They are saying that is saw dust," Hannity declared. "Does that look like saw dust to you?"

"It's on top of a saw," X user @ArtCandee replied.

She wasn't the only viewer to take Hannity to task for his cynical take on Hunter Biden's legal filing, which disputed prosecutors' photographic evidence against President Joe Biden's son.

"The prosecution is flat out wrong — both that Mr. Biden 'took' this photograph and in claiming that it depicts 'cocaine,'" Biden's attorney wrote. "Multiple sources have pointed out, and a review of discovery confirms, this is actually a photo of sawdust from an expert carpenter and it was sent to Mr. Biden, not vice versa."

X users reminded Hannity of these facts, and provided their own analyses.

"Each of those lines is at least an inch thick," replied @CholericCleric. "Horses were snorting at this party?"

"If it’s not sawdust, it’s really sh---- cocaine," argued @SarahBCalif. "Cut with lint."

Even Keith Olbermann, of MSNBC renown, took a moment to weigh in on the alleged sawdust or coke.

"All these years Hannity has wondered why he hasn't been getting a sparkle off that really high grade Bolivian Marching Saw Dust Podsr," he quipped.

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hanimmal said:

https://www.rawstory.com/sean-hannity-cocaine/
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BudmanTX said:

keep him in jail, i'm sure comer pile and gym would love to talk with him

Prosecutors push to send FBI source accused of lying about Bidens back to jail

The special counsel investigating Hunter Biden is asking a court in Los Angeles to overturn an order allowing Alexander Smirnov to be free on GPS monitoring as he awaits trial.

www.politico.com

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hanimmal said:

The 6 mil in cash and being able to get a new passport at any Israeli consulate seems like a no brainer flight risk.

I wonder how long it takes for the GQP to call him a 'hostage' too.

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BudmanTX said:

@hanimmal

https://www.rawstory.com/republicans-delete-biden-impeachment-witness-info/


and they're off........

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden “never had any involvement” in the business dealings of other members of his family, his brother James Biden testified Wednesday when he appeared for a voluntary private interview on Capitol Hill as part of House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry.

“I have had a 50-year career in a variety of business ventures. Joe Biden has never had any involvement or any direct or indirect financial interest in those activities,” the president’s younger brother said in a 10-page opening statement to lawmakers obtained by The Associated Press. “None.”

The interview with both Republican and Democratic staff as well as lawmakers lasted more than eight hours. During several breaks, Republicans came out and told reporters, without citing details, that James Biden’s responses contradicted his opening statement and that he had made efforts to avoid directly answering investigators’ questions.

“He has said a lot of things that have contradicted himself in that testimony,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., said during an afternoon break from questioning. “So when you see the transcript, you’ll see.”

The interview with James Biden was the latest in a series that GOP lawmakers have conducted recently as they seek to rebuild momentum for an impeachment process surrounding the Biden family’s overseas finances that has stalled in recent months.

Criticism over the lack of evidence against the president has grown even among Republicans. Many GOP lawmakers say they have yet to see evidence of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” required for impeachment, despite alleged efforts by members of the Biden family to leverage the last name into corporate paydays domestically and abroad.

Beyond the internal struggle, a central claim of the GOP investigation has also been undermined by federal prosecutors, who last week indicted an FBI informant who claimed there was a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving the president, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company.

The informant’s claims had been part of the foundation of the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, with investigators even making mention of the unsubstantiated claim in letters to prospective witnesses.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, one of the lead impeachment investigators, told reporters Wednesday that the indictment of Alexander Smirnov doesn’t “change the underlying facts” of their investigation. He added that the FBI saw this informant as a valued source for years.

An attorney for Hunter Biden, who is expected to give a deposition next week, said the charges show the probe is “based on dishonest, uncredible allegations and witnesses.”

Both James and Hunter Biden were subpoenaed by the committee in November. Lawyers for James Biden have said there was no justification for the subpoena because the committee had already reviewed private bank records and transactions between the two brothers. The committee found records of two loans that were made when Joe Biden was not in office or a candidate for president.

“With my appearance here today, the committees will have the information to conclude that the negative and destructive assumptions about me and my relationship with my brother Joe are wrong,” James Biden said in his statement. “There is no basis for this inquiry to continue.”

The impeachment inquiry, which began in September under the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, has included the recent depositions of several former Biden family associates. In nearly every one of those interviews, the witnesses have stated that they have seen no evidence that Joe Biden was directly involved in his son or brother’s business ventures.

Nonetheless, Republicans, led by Oversight Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, have said they are pushing ahead with an inquiry that could result in impeachment charges against Biden, the ultimate penalty for what the Constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

There had been private discussions about bringing articles of impeachment against Biden to the House floor for a vote in February but those conversations have stalled as support for the effort has waned among the majority. House Republicans instead shifted their focus in the new year to holding Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas accountable for his handling of the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. Last week, the razor-thin GOP majority barely managed to impeach Mayorkas, reflecting political desperation as Republicans struggle to make good on the priorities they campaigned on before November.

The attention is now expected to shift back to the impeachment of Joe Biden as Republicans look to detract attention from the various legal challenges plaguing former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nominee.

House Democrats have remained united against the monthslong impeachment effort and have called on Republicans to end what they call a “sham process.” Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said James Biden is the latest example of Republicans playing political games with no sign of tangible evidence that would rise to the level of impeaching a president.

“This is a subdued affair. And, again, it feels to me as if everyone knows the impeachment investigation is over,” Raskin told reporters when the interview broke for lunch. “I think Chairman Comer has said publicly that it’s — that it doesn’t look like the support is there for impeachment.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Hunter Biden appeared Wednesday on Capitol Hill for a closed-door deposition with lawmakers, a critical moment for Republicans as their impeachment inquiry into his father and the family’s business affairs teeters on the brink of collapse.

“I am here today to provide the committees with the one uncontestable fact that should end the false premise of this inquiry: I did not involve my father in my business,” Hunter Biden said in an opening statement obtained by The Associated Press.

The deposition could mark a decisive point for the 14-month Republican investigation into the Biden family, which has centered on Hunter Biden and his overseas work for clients in Ukraine, China, Romania and other countries. Republicans have long questioned whether those business dealings involved corruption and influence peddling by President Joe Biden, particularly when he was vice president.

Yet after conducting dozens of interviews and obtaining more than 100,000 pages of documents, Republicans have yet to produce direct evidence of misconduct by the president. Meanwhile, an FBI informant who alleged a bribery scheme involving the Bidens — a claim Republicans had cited repeatedly to justify their probe — is facing charges from federal prosecutors who accuse him of fabricating the story.

Despite the stakes of their investigation, it remains unclear how much useful information Republicans will be able to extract from Hunter Biden during the deposition. He is under federal investigation and has been indicted on nine federal tax charges and a firearm charge in Delaware, which means he could refuse to answer some questions by asserting his Fifth Amendment rights.

The task of interviewing Hunter falls primarily to Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan, the GOP chairmen leading the impeachment investigation. They first subpoenaed Hunter Biden in November, demanding that he appear before lawmakers in a private setting. Biden and his attorneys refused, warning that his testimony could be selectively leaked and manipulated. They insisted that Hunter Biden would only testify in public.

On the day of the subpoena, Hunter Biden not only snubbed lawmakers waiting for him in a hearing room — he did also while appearing right outside the Capitol, holding a press conference where he denounced the investigation into his family.

Both sides ultimately agreed in January to a private deposition with a set of conditions. The interview with Hunter Biden will not be filmed and Republicans have agreed to quickly release the transcript.

“Our committees have the opportunity to depose Hunter Biden, a key witness in our impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden, about this record of evidence,” Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement to The Associated Press. “This deposition is not the conclusion of the impeachment inquiry. There are more subpoenas and witness interviews to come.”

Hunter will be the second member of the Biden family questioned by Republicans in recent days. They conducted a more than eight-hour interview last week with James Biden, the president’s brother. He insisted to lawmakers that Joe Biden has “never had any involvement,” financially or otherwise, in his business ventures.

Looming large over the interview are developments on the other side of the country in Nevada, where federal prosecutors this month indicted an FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, who claimed there was a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving the president, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company. Prosecutors in court documents assert that Smirnov has had “extensive and extremely recent” contact with people who are aligned with Russian intelligence.

Smirnov’s attorneys have said he is presumed innocent.

Republicans pressed the FBI last summer over the informant’s claims, demanding to see the underlying documents and ultimately releasing the unverified information to the public. The claim was cited repeatedly in letters that House Republicans sent to impeachment witnesses.

Many GOP lawmakers say they have yet to see evidence of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” required for impeachment, despite alleged efforts by members of the Biden family to leverage the last name into corporate paydays domestically and abroad.

But the Republican chairmen leading the impeachment effort remain undeterred by the series of setbacks to their marquee investigation. Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said last week that the informant’s indictment “does not change the fundamental facts” that the Biden family tried to benefit off the family name in several overseas businesses.

And Comer told Fox News on Tuesday that Smirnov was never “a key part of this investigation.”

Both Comer and Jordan have insisted for the past year that their investigation and inquiry is focused solely on Joe Biden and what actions, if any, he took while as vice president or president to benefit his family. But at nearly every turn, their probe has had a consistent and heavy focus on Hunter Biden. Several lines of inquiry have been opened into Hunter’s international business affairs, his artwork sales and even his personal life and on-and-off battle with addiction.

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden has no shortage of legal headaches off Capitol Hill as he faces criminal charges in two states from a special counsel investigation. He’s charged with firearm counts in Delaware, alleging he broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018, a period when he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. Special counsel David Weiss filed additional charges late last year, alleging he failed to pay about $1.4 million in taxes over three years.

He has pleaded not guilty in both cases.

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hanimmal said:

… And Comer told Fox News on Tuesday that Smirnov was never “a key part of this investigation.”

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BudmanTX said:

Hunter Biden transcript::::

https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Hunter-Biden-Transcript_Redacted.pdf

it is redacted, but it's not bad......and it's 229 pages too......

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hanimmal said:

I'm actually trying to get through it now but keep getting distracted, got to love how it starts off:

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Alexander Smirnov was cast by Republicans as one of the FBI’s most trusted informants, offering a “highly credible” account of brazen public corruption by Joe Biden that formed a pillar of the House impeachment investigation of the Democratic president.

Then, last month, the script changed dramatically.

Smirnov, 43, finds himself charged with lying to the FBI, accused of fabricating a tale of bribery and espionage involving then-Vice President Biden and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and he has told officials he has Russian intelligence contacts.

It’s muddied the GOP inquiry plenty.

Interviews and a review of public records by The Associated Press suggest this was not likely Smirnov’s first turn in what the government says is a cycle as a fabulist.

They offer a portrait of a businessman who operated a string of murky shell companies, ran with others who have been accused of fraud, and boasted of his own ties to the FBI. The episode highlights not only the perils of the Republicans’ reliance on unverified information in their quest to confront Biden but also the risks inherent in the FBI’s use of sometimes-unreliable informants who may have ulterior motives.

“How come in all of the universe nobody in America figured out for years that this guy is a fraud and a liar? How did this (expletive) make its way to Congress?” said Yossi Attia, a Los Angeles businessman who has interacted with Smirnov and once ran a penny stock company in which Smirnov held a substantial stake.

Republicans leading the impeachment inquiry have dismissed the fabrication allegations against Smirnov as irrelevant to their investigation and are raising doubts about the FBI’s credibility. The FBI, for its part, has never publicly called the informant’s information verified or complete.

“The trust level that I have with the FBI is zero,” Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said in a Fox News interview this past week.

Smirnov’s lawyers did not address questions about their client’s past business dealings.

“Mr. Smirnoff is charged with making a false statement to federal officials. All of these inquiries into his prior business dealings only deflect from the important question of the accuracy of his prosecution,” attorneys David Z. Chesnoff and Richard A. Schonfeld said in a statement.

A MURKY PAST
Little is known publicly about Smirnov other than allegations in the government’s case, court records, corporate financial disclosures and business filings.

A dual Israeli and U.S. citizen, Smirnov moved to the United States in 2006, traveling in Los Angeles’ Eastern European expatriate circles for more than a decade while providing information to the FBI. It wasn’t immediately clear what investigations Smirnov may have contributed to, though he worked with an FBI handler based in Seattle and the indictment suggests he provided reporting related to “ROC” — a likely reference to Russian organized crime.

A short biography included in a corporate financial document from 2011 describes Smirnov as a veteran businessman “fluent in Russian, English, Hebrew and Arabic” who once was president of a “private mineral and logistic operation, with assets in Russia.”

Even as Smirnov was being paid as a government informant, he participated in duplicitous business schemes, according to court records and interviews.

One example is his investment in an obscure penny-stock company called Eco-Trade Corp.

Such companies can yield a handsome return on a minimal investment. They are lightly regulated and often subject to financial scams and market manipulation.

In 2010, Smirnov purchased a stake in Eco-Trade valued at roughly $3 million as the company was on the verge of launching an advertising blitz that dramatically inflated its value. A crash three years later saddled investors with losses.

Eco-Trade had existed on paper for years under a variety of names and purported business aims, with control of the company changing hands repeatedly until it landed with some associates of Smirnov, according to interviews, court records and Securities and Exchange Commission filings. It was sued multiple times for securities fraud, leading to at least one settlement.

The company’s fortunes began to rise in 2010 after William Lieberman, who was later convicted in a separate penny stock fraud scheme, became president. Smirnov was appointed chairman of the company’s board, but ultimately declined to take the position, SEC filings show.

Soon the company was issuing news releases promoting new financial commitments, ongoing negotiations for oil and gas rights and the prospect of riches to be made in the Bakken oil fields of Montana.

The stock caught fire online and share prices soared to more than 70 cents, even as analysts warned about the company’s dodgy past. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority suspended trading of shares for several weeks in the spring of 2013. Then the stock’s price plummeted and the company went dormant.

It’s unclear from SEC filings how much Smirnov may have made. He has not been not accused by authorities of wrongdoing in connection with that company.

Court records indicate it wasn’t his only stock scheme.

SIX-FIGURE INVESTMENT, FAKE STOCK
In 2016, Tigran Sarkisyan and Hripsime Khachtryan sued Smirnov, claiming he pitched them on a company called Grand Pacaraima Gold Corp. It was only after paying him $100,000 that the two discovered the stock certificates Smirnov provided were fake, according to the complaint. When they approached him about it, Smirnov told them he was working with authorities on a fraud investigation that did not involve them and he “continued to make excuses and lie” about their investment, the complaint said.

The suit was dismissed in 2018 when Sarkisyan and Khachatryan failed to show up for a court date because they were incarcerated. The two been sentenced to prison for racketeering weeks earlier in a far-reaching case against dozens of defendants that included allegations of fraud, money laundering and murder-for-hire, court records show.

Another acquaintance, Dmitry Fomichev, sued Smirnov in 2013, claiming Smirnov failed to repay a $500,000 loan. Court records state Smirnov boasted of his connections with the FBI and said he could help Fomichev “resolve certain matters then being investigated by several agencies of the federal government” in exchange for the loan.

Several months later, Fomichev was indicted on tax and immigration charges and sentenced to probation. A Los Angeles judge ruled in Fomichev’s favor in the civil case, though, issuing a nearly $600,000 judgement against Smirnov.

Business disclosures reveal Smirnov also served as president of a company called GV Global Communications, which was founded by Avady and Galina Vaynter, a penny-stock power couple who have often found themselves at the center of litigation with investors and former business partners.

In one case settled last year, according to records, the Vaynters accepted a $250,000 judgment against them after the disappearance of 619,000 share certificates for a company they controlled, which were owed to one of their investors. The Vaynters accused a business partner of stealing the certificates from their home, though their daughter filed a police report in 2016 that stated the shares were inside a pink briefcase that was lost near a Los Angeles community college, court records show.

In an interview, Galina Vaynter acknowledged Smirnov had a role in GV Global Partners, but insisted it was only on paper and lasted for a month at most. She adamantly denied any wrongdoing in connection with past business dealings.

“All of the allegations are not true,” Vaynter said, adding, “I can state right now in front of God and any authorities — anybody — and prove myself. No one can point any finger on us.”

Court documents filed in Smirnov’s current criminal case read like a spy novel, portraying him as a jet-setting global traveler who took meetings with mysterious foreign figures and stashed $6 million across numerous accounts.

Prosecutors also have emphasized Smirnov’s preoccupation with keeping his accumulated wealth out of his own name, noting how he would withdraw large sums and use it to purchase cashier’s checks to give to his longtime girlfriend. After moving to Las Vegas in 2022, he gave her money to purchase a $1 million condo just off Elvis Presley Boulevard that is owned under her name, records show.

Smirnov told his FBI handler in 2017 that the Biden family name surfaced during a business call he had with a representative for Burisma, where Biden’s son Hunter served on the company’s board.

But after Donald Trump and his allies, including Rudy Giuliani, acting as a Trump lawyer, began to peddle unsupported corruption claims involving the Bidens and Ukraine before the 2020 presidential election, Smirnov’s story grew more elaborate.

‘I’LL TRY TO PROVE IT FOR YOU BRO’


Steve Laycock, a former FBI executive assistant director of the bureau’s intelligence branch who oversaw management of its confidential human source program, said informants can be vital for investigations because they offer “placement and access” that agents might not otherwise have on their own.

But, he said, it is imperative on an informant’s handler to ask probing questions of an informant and to vet information through other sources.

“We’re in a society now of disinformation and misinformation. You’ve really got to be watching and on the watch when information comes in and validating and verifying it,” he said

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hanimmal said:

I'm actually trying to get through it now but keep getting distracted, got to love how it starts off:

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