https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alexander-smirnov-joe-biden-bribe_n_65ce83d9e4b043f1c0aa7d26
Justice Department Charges FBI Informant With Falsely Alleging Joe Biden Paid Bribes
A central piece of evidence in the impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden may have just evaporated.
The Justice Department on Thursday announced that an FBI informant was lying when he said a Ukrainian oligarch told him he’d bribed Biden.
Special counsel David Weiss, the U. S. attorney prosecuting the president’s son Hunter Biden on gun purchase and tax delinquency crimes, announced that FBI informant Alexander Smirnov has been charged with making a false statement and creating a false record related to the bribery allegation.
Republicans brought Smirnov’s claims to light last summer as part of their investigation into alleged corruption in the Biden family. House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) threatened the FBI director with contempt of Congress if he refused to hand over a document recording Smirnov’s bribe claim.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wound up obtaining and publishing the file. In the document, an FBI agent said his confidential source had reported that in June 2020, Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, which previously employed the president’s son, had paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million in bribes.
The supposed bribe fit with allegations that then-President Donald Trump made in 2019 that, as vice president in the Obama administration, Joe Biden had pushed for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to protect his son.
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