#smirnov — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #smirnov, aggregated by home.social.
-
https://www.europesays.com/ee/145422/ Memo | Kadakat painutamas käinud Paide laevareisi tulemus: karussell, kingitus, kolm punkti, kuhjaga mõtteainet (galerii!) – Soccernet.ee #cabral #cham #EbrimaJarju #EE #Eesti #EestiKeel #Estonia #Estonian #jarju #jobarteh #jürisoo #kivi #kuressaare #lilander #lukka #MarcoLukka #mikson #nigula #paide #PaideLinnameeskond #piht #PremiumLiiga #sinilaid #smirnov #sohna #Sport #Sports #tur #vassiljev #VladimirVassiljev
-
A Disgraced Hunter Biden Informant Had Ties to Trump Social Media Bid
Alexander Smirnov, whose case is now under review by Trump’s Justice Department, had a stake in the firm that lost out to Truth Social in the rush to launch a Trump-branded platform.
#AlexanderSmirnov #Smirnov #TruthSocial #Trump #FreeSpace
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/alexander-smirnov-trump-biden-impeachment-doj/
-
An Anti-Biden Conspirator Now Acknowledges That #Ron #Johnson Was
💥“Doing the Bidding”💥of RussiaIn sworn testimony before Congress, Lev #Parnas, a former Trump henchman, says the senator from Wisconsin was♦️ “our guy in the Senate.”♦️
On Wednesday, Lev Parnas, the Ukrainian businessman who worked closely with former New York mayor Rudy #Giuliani and other Trump associates to smear Biden in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, and who eventually went to #prison for his wrongdoing, said in testimony before the House Oversight Committee, 🔹“The American people have been lied to, by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and various individuals in government and media positions, all of whom worked to create a web of falsehood. 🔹They did this purely to serve their own interests, knowing that it would undermine the strength of our nation.”
🔥 In damning testimony at the hearing, which House Republicans had organized in a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to develop their Ukraine-related argument for impeaching Biden, Parnas explained,
👉 The only information ever pushed about the Bidens and Ukraine has come from Russia and Russian agents, which everyone sitting here today knows.
FBI informant Alexander #Smirnov has admitted to getting all his so-called intelligence on the Bidens from Russia.According to their own statements, federal prosecutors found him guilty of “actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections.”
And as recently as November 2023, a number of Ukrainian politicians sympathetic to Russia were implicated as having helped funnel false information about the Bidens to Giuliani while also being connected to a Russian foreign influence network.
During more than a year of jetting around Europe, as part of what he described as a Giuliani-led effort to dig up dirt on Biden before the 2020 election, Parnas said,
👉 I found precisely zero proof of the Bidens’ criminality.
Instead, what I learned in that timeframe was the true nature of the conspiracy that the Kremlin was forcing through Russian, Ukrainian, American, and other channels to interfere in our elections.Ultimately this was meant to benefit Trump’s reelection, which would in turn benefit Vladimir #Putin.
Which brings us back to #Ron #Johnson.
After the senator dismissed his briefing from the FBI, Johnson moved to release a report that The New York Times described as “little more than a rehashing six weeks before Election Day of unproven allegations that echo an active Russian #disinformation campaign and have been pushed by Mr. Trump.”Where was Johnson getting his material?
Parnas told the House Committee on Wednesday that Giuliani and his allies convened 🌟“regular strategy meetings at BLT Steak in Washington, D.C.,”
and “I was told in that setting that Senator Ron Johnson would be 🔸‘our guy in the Senate,’ 🔸responsible for pushing all the information we were getting. But he would actually end up spreading unverified conspiracy theories instead.”👉 “Every person integral to this shadow diplomacy knew that the Biden corruption rumors were baseless,” Parnas testified.
Then-Congressman #Devin #Nunes, Senator #Ron #Johnson, and many other individuals understood that they were pushing a false narrative. The same goes for #John #Solomon, #Sean #Hannity, and media personnel, particularly at #Fox #News, who used that narrative to manipulate the public ahead of the 2020 election.
They are still doing this today, as we approach the 2024 election.After Parnas testified, US Representative Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) followed up on the allegation regarding Johnson.
Referencing the statement that the Wisconsinite would be the group’s “‘guy in the Senate’ to push all the information,” Frost asked,
“What did you mean by that?”👉 “Senator Ron Johnson was our guy in the Senate,” replied Parnas.
“It was told to me that, when we pushed the information, he was going to push it in the halls of Congress.”Frost continued, “So when the media was getting skeptical about pushing disinformation
—after they’ve proven it wrong time and time again
—the plan was to have a US senator, Ron Johnson, to push that information even further?”👉 “Correct,” said Parnas, “because we had Congressman Nunes already doing it, so Senator Ron Johnson jumped on board.”
-
The US firm that paid indicted FBI informant Smirnoff is tied to Trump associates in Dubai
An American company that paid the now indicted FBI informant #Alexander #Smirnov in 2020 is connected to a UK company owned by #Trump business #associates in Dubai, according to business filings and court documents.
Smirnov is now accused of #lying to the FBI about #Hunter #Biden and his father, President Joe Biden, alleging that they engaged in a bribery scheme with executives at the Ukrainian energy company #Burisma.
Smirnov’s accounts to the FBI, beginning in 2020, that federal prosecutors now say are fabrications, served as a major justification of the House impeachment investigation into the Bidens.
Republican lawmakers have repeatedly touted Smirnov as a reliable informant, and the chairman of the House oversight committee, James Comer, even threatened to hold FBI director Christopher Wray in contempt unless he “handed over” a June 2020 FBI form with Smirnov’s claims to the committee.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/14/company-paying-fbi-informant-trump-connections?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other -
Fascinating article on FBI informant Alexander Smirnov charged for lying about Bidens
His business exploits included pitching a $1 million deal in 2021 to Giuliani associate Sam Kislin, work with Boris Nayflish and more
-
Judge orders #HouseRepublicans #Biden #impeachment star witness & #discredited fmr #FBI informant #AlexanderSmirnov to remain in #jail
#Smirnov pleaded not guilty Mon to charges that he lied to the FBI when he claimed to know that Joe Biden & his son #HunterBiden took bribes, & the judge overseeing his case ordered him to remain in jail out of concern he might #flee the country.
#law
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/26/fbi-informant-biden-smirnov-not-guilty/ -
The #Smirnov case has generated plenty of headlines and has caused the leading Republican impeachers—namely, Reps. James #Comer and Jim #Jordan—to look foolish.
But it’s important to view the Smirnov affair in this wider context: Republicans and the MAGA right have eagerly participated in Kremlin scheming to undermine BidenThis Moscow plot has been a matter of public record for years. In February 2020, intelligence officials briefed House lawmakers that Moscow was interfering in the election to assist Trump’s reelection.
(This briefing, of course, angered Trump, who had refused to acknowledge that a covert program authorized by Russian leader Vladimir Putin helped him win the White House four years earlier, and he replaced the acting director of national intelligence.)
Months later, William Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, issued a statement declaring that Russia “is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden…Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television.”
That was related to #Giuliani’s endeavor.
The NCSC statement noted that a pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian named Andriy #Derkach, the son of a former KGB official, was “spreading claims about corruption…to undermine former Vice President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party.”In September 2020, Derkach was sanctioned by Trump’s Treasury Department, which called him “an active Russian agent for over a decade” and declared he was one of a group of “Russia-linked election interference actors.”
Treasury said Derkach had maintained “close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services” and had “directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election.”
Trump’s own Treasury secretary, Steve #Mnuchin, remarked, “Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world.”
And who was working with Derkach to spread the false story that Joe Biden had blocked an investigation of Burisma? #Giuliani.
At one point, Derkach staged press conferences in Kyiv and played secretly recorded tapes of Biden speaking by phone with former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
Derkach insisted the recordings supported Giuliani’s allegations about Biden.
Yet the tapes revealed no misconduct. This was a disinformation stunt.
Ukrainians critical of Russia speculated that the tapes originated with Russian intelligence.
Giuliani never expressed shame for hooking up with a Russian agent. He publicly admitted he was in touch with Derkach and called him “very helpful.” He said that he and Derkach had spoken about Ukraine many times.
The bottom line: According to Trump administration officials, the Biden-Burisma allegations were in part (if not wholly) the work of Russian operatives.
Yet Trump, the MAGA right, and their media allies have been beating this drum for years, and once the GOP won back the House in 2022, it became impeachment fodder.
Then Comer, Jordan, and the rest of their crew embraced Smirnov’s charges, even though they were not substantiated and even though they were in sync with a known Russian disinformation plot that targeted Biden to aid Trump.
Moreover, it was highly suspicious that Smirnov shared his allegations with his FBI handler in June 2020
—after not mentioning them for years
—just when Giuliani and other Trumpers were striving to tar Joe Biden with this false tale.But none of that matters for the Party of Trump and its leader.
They seem unconcerned about collaborating—colluding?—with a Kremlin operation.
After all, it worked for Trump in 2016, and since then he and his cult have demonstrated no reluctance to be exploited by Russia or to exploit Russian disinformation, even as Putin wages a horrendous war in Ukraine and intensifies his repressive and murderous reign at home.
The Smirnov case—of which there is much more to learn—shows not only that Trump and the GOP are Putin dupes;
they are willing dupes. -
In June 2020, a businessman and fixer named Alexander #Smirnov, who was also an #FBI informant, passed his handler at the bureau a potentially explosive tip: The owner of #Burisma, a #Ukrainian energy company, had told him that he had paid $5 million each to Joe #Biden and his son #Hunter so the elder Biden, then vice president, would stop an investigation into the firm.
-
It was #Sawdust not cocaine!
I didn't know it, but the photo was from Keith Ablow, who was #HunterBiden psychiatrist.
@emptywheel pointed this out when the Special Counsel Davis Weiss’ office didn't know it was sawdust!Marcy also talked about the discredited #Smirnov being arrested again and what it means @nicolesandler
https://youtu.be/IQsvZenYF54 @n1xnx -
Listen to Marcy Wheeler @emptywheel talk live about how this sawdust cocaine photo came to be used by Special Counsel Davis Weiss’ office to prosecute Hunter Biden.
Tune in at 5ET/2PT @nicolesandler show http://nicolesandler.com/listen-live or watch the whole show here: https://youtu.be/IQsvZenYF54#Smirnov #HunterBiden #Sawdust #DavidWeiss #uspol
Here's short clip -
Cartoon Friday 🤗
1. “With the arrest of Alexander #Smirnov — the main source of ‘evidence’ for the impeachment of Joe #Biden — for lying to the #FBI, and all the other witnesses refuting the notion that President Biden committed any high crime or misdemeanor, could the #House inquiry get any worse for the #GOP? Maybe.”-#RickMcKee
2. “The shoes are the least tacky aspect of the #WhiteSupremacist, #Fascist, neo-#NAZI-infested #MAGA movement.”-#DarrinBell
3. Historical (old Reagan gem by #HerbLock)
#republicans #republicancult #voteblue #counterpoint
https://counterpoint.substack.com/p/how-much-is-too-much-edition -
#AlexanderSmirnov, the fmr #FBI #informant indicted for lying about President Joe #Biden's family & their alleged dealings in #Ukraine, has been re-arrested in #Nevada.
Though prosecutors fought to keep him behind bars, #Smirnov was released by Magistrate Judge Daniel Albregts in NV on Tues w/ several conditions, including GPS monitoring & the surrender of his 2 passports.
#law #HouseRepublicans #RussianAsset
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/22/politics/alexander-smirnov-re-arrested?cid=ios_app -
#deleted #informant #impeachment #Smirnov #Russian #disinformation
Donald Trump's niece is convinced Reps. James #Comer (R-KY) and Jim #Jordan (R-OH) are in
"deep s---"
and could be #investigated for peddling fictitious FBI witness testimony to sully President Joe Biden and his son Hunter as a basis for impeachment.https://www.rawstory.com/mary-trump-jordan-comer-criminal-charges/
-
House Republicans quietly #deleted a reference to their epic fail of an FBI #informant in a letter to a potential witness in the somehow-still-ongoing #impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
Republicans have hinged their Biden investigation on accusations from a supposedly credible but confidential FBI source that Biden and his son Hunter accepted bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch.
But the Justice Department has since charged that source, former FBI informant Alexander #Smirnov, with making false statements and revealed his accusation may have been #Russian #disinformation.
-
Straight from the horse's mouth (the horse in this case being #DavidWeiss, the guy who's prosecuting #HunterBiden). Confirming what everyone with a brain cell has known since 2019, the whole #Burisma story alleging that #JoeBiden did anything inappropriate was a complete fabrication.
By the time the "whistleblower" had any interaction with Burisma officials, both Joe Biden and the Ukrainian prosecutor he supposedly pressured were already out of office.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24435391/240220-smirnov-detention.pdf
-
#Smirnov #Smirnov #falsely #Burisma #Hunter #Biden #Republicans
Republicans’ Star Hunter Biden Witness Is an Epic Disaster
Ex-FBI informant Alexander Smirnov confessed that he has ties to Russian intelligence.
Alexander Smirnov, a longtime FBI informant with ties to Ukraine, had claimed to have proof of Biden and his son Hunter accepting bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch.
Republicans repeatedly touted Smirnov’s claims in their quest to impeach the president.
But last week, the Justice Department announced that it was charging Smirnov with making a false statement and creating a false record related to the bribery allegation.
Now, in a detention memo filed Tuesday, the Justice Department revealed that Smirnov confessed that Russian intelligence officers helped him smear Hunter Biden.
Smrinov initially tried to spread the Biden Ukrainian corruption story just before the 2020 election, but Justice Department prosecutors are warning that Smirnov’s “misinformation” goes far beyond that.
“He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November,” they said in the filing
https://newrepublic.com/post/179163/republicans-star-hunter-biden-witness-epic-disaster -
An FBI informant charged with lying to investigators about a fictitious bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company has “had contact with foreign intelligence services, including Russian intelligence agencies,” prosecutors alleged in court documents on Tuesday.
Alexander #Smirnov's contacts included a figure prosecutors called "Russian Official 1," whom the the informant allegedly described as "the son of a former high-ranking Russian government official, someone who purportedly controls two groups of individuals tasked with carrying out assassination efforts in a third-party country."
#Smirnov was indicted last week on charges he lied to the FBI, #falsely telling them that executives with now-defunct Ukrainian energy company #Burisma had paid #Hunter and Joe #Biden $5 million each in bribes.
The informant's claims have been a pillar of a months-long effort by congressional #Republicans to impeach the president.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/02/20/hunter-biden-accuser-smirnov-russia-intelligence/72676162007/ -
Yet another ‘Win-Win’ week for #Republican #Cult
- Trump slapped with a $355M judgement
- #DineshDSouza’s 2000Mules doc admits there's NO evidence
- Republican ‘witness’ #Smirnov #Indicted for lying to #FBI
- ‘Do Nothing’ Mike #Johnson does nothing
- #House on ?well-deserved vacation/recess
- Traitor #Carlson extoling virtues of #Russia, #Navalny dead
- Next big trial up in NYC, 34 counts fraud, election shenanigans (=criminal, so jail is possible!)
- #Putin likes #Biden more than Trump ( #maskirovka)
- KC/Taylor win #SuperbowlPS: #HeatherCoxRichardson now has a podcast 🤗
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/podcast
https://overcast.fm/+BGyw087xtY -
@fourthoffour Did you miss this 😬
The [Trump-appointed] special counsel investigating #HunterBiden has charged a former FBI informant with fabricating claims that #Biden and his son each sought $5 million bribes from a Ukrainian company — a stinging setback for #Republicans who cited the allegations in their push to impeach the president
The longtime informant, Alexander #Smirnov, 43, is accused of falsely telling the FBI that Hunter Biden, then a paid board member of the energy giant #Burisma, demanded the money to protect the company from an investigation by the country’s prosecutor general at the time
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/us/politics/fbi-informant-bidens-ukraine.html
-
#MAGA Agenda Falling Apart in the Courts
1. True the Vote, the right-wing organization that insisted it had evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, has told a GA judge that…it has no such evidence.
Their claims provided the basis for the arguments about voter fraud highlighted in right-wing [nutcase] Dinesh #DSouza’s film #2000Mules.
2. A grand jury convened by Special Counsel David Weiss, whom #Trump appointed to investigate #HunterBiden, indicted former #FBI informant Alexander #Smirnov for making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record about Hunter Biden
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-15-2024
-
In July, Digital World said it would pay $18 million if the merger with Trump Media Group goes through, to settle SEC charges that it had misled investors and violated rules designed to counter fraud.
The biggest financial losers from the insider-trading scheme, however, probably were early Digital World investors who believed in Trump’s company enough to buy up shares in the hours after he announced the merger deal.
In the days when the insiders were cashing out, Digital World’s share price peaked at $175. Shares closed Friday at $40.60.
In June 2021, #Orlando went to meet with #Shvartsman and other prospective investors at the Miami-area offices of Rocket One, a little-known private equity firm that had marketed itself on LinkedIn as investing in “fearless entrepreneurs.”
Shvartsman had helped run a nightclub in the 1990s in Edmonton, Alberta, called Kaos that local police alleged was financed by the Russian mob, a 2022 Financial Times report said — a claim Shvartsman denied, and for which he was never charged.
He also founded Transact First, a company whose “cashless ATMs” help marijuana dispensaries transfer money from banks that would otherwise reject them as customers under federal law, according to a Bloomberg News report in 2022, which called him the “granddaddy” of the “major cashless ATM players.”
The meeting came one month after Orlando had signed a registration statement filed with the SEC saying Digital World had not “initiated any substantive discussions, directly or indirectly, with any business combination target.”
But messages included in an FBI affidavit indicate that Trump’s company was part of the conversation in the meeting.In an email shortly afterward, #Garelick wrote that he and Shvartsman had talked with Orlando about the “future payment processing needs for the Trump Media Group.”
One executive at Rocket One, Allen #Beyer, told the firm’s leaders after the meeting that he was underwhelmed, writing in a text message that Trump’s last online venture, a blog, “was an embarrassment” and that the idea of an app just for “Forever Trumpers” would “be a bust,” the affidavit said.
“Would you ever be associated with this as a ‘founder’ or anything in case it goes up in literal flames?” Beyer wrote.
He did not respond to requests for comment.Garelick replied, however, that the investment came with “downside protection,” the affidavit said.
Garelick, Shvartsman and his brother, Gerald, who ran an outdoor-furniture store, invested enough to guarantee Garelick a seat on Digital World’s board, the indictment said.
The three men had signed confidentiality agreements before the meeting saying they would not trade on the inside information.
But over the next few months, they bought up hundreds of thousands of dollars of Digital World shares and trading contracts, known as #warrants, for small fractions of the price the shares would command once the deal was publicly disclosed.
The men also spoke with #Postolnikov, another Miami-area entrepreneur who, like Shvartsman, was involved in the business of international payments.
According to British financial records, Postolnikov owns a bank headquartered on the small Caribbean island of Dominica, called Paxum, that promotes itself as a financial conduit for online adult entertainment — an industry, like marijuana dispensaries, that banks traditionally have chosen to avoid.
Born in St. Petersburg, Postolnikov had in 2017 faced an arrest warrant in his hometown on charges of tax fraud, according to a court ruling obtained by The Post. That warrant, the ruling shows, was lifted in 2018, following the direct intervention of Russia’s deputy prosecutor general, who said the case was without merit.
By 2021, Postolnikov, whose uncle, Aleksandr #Smirnov, had served for most of the last two decades as a senior member of the Russian government, was saying in online profiles he lived in Miami Beach.
In March 2021, he donated $30,000 to Florida Gov. Ron #DeSantis’s reelection campaign, campaign finance records show.
A month later, according to Miami-Dade property records, a company he owns bought a $6 million condo on Fisher Island, a private island near Miami Beach once named “America’s richest Zip code.”
In June 2021, after the meeting with Orlando, Garelick wrote Postolnikov an email referring to some “good times last night,” without details, and asked about his interest in investing in “that Trump Media Group #SPAC we mentioned,” the affidavit alleges.
When Digital World announced its initial public offering in September 2021, it made no mention of #Trump and said only that it intended to focus on “middle market and emerging growth technology-focused companies in the Americas.”
But a day later, Postolnikov started buying hundreds of thousands of stock units and warrants in Digital World via a company called APLC Investments, a search warrant affidavit alleges.
#insidertrading #corruption
(2/n) -
Right now, chamber music from #Kerteminde: #Shostakovich #Lutoslawski #Tabakova #Smirnov and #Schönberg https://buff.ly/47gt4tQ #wch
-
In 20 minutes, chamber music from #Kerteminde: #Shostakovich #Lutoslawski #Tabakova #Smirnov and #Schönberg https://buff.ly/47gt4tQ #wch