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    Judge rejects defense efforts to dismiss Hunter Biden’s federal gun case

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    A federal judge in Delaware refused on Friday to throw out a federal gun case against Hunter Biden, rejecting the president’s son’s claim that he is being prosecuted for political purposes as well as other arguments.The US district judge Maryellen Noreika denied defense efforts to scuttle the prosecution charging Hunter Biden with lying about his drug use in October 2018 on a form to buy a gun that he kept for about 11 days.Hunter Biden’s lawyers had argued the case was politically motivated and asserted that an immunity provision from an original plea deal that fell apart still held. They had also challenged the appointment of the special counsel David Weiss, the US attorney in Delaware, to lead the prosecution.Noreika, who was appointed to the bench by Donald Trump, has not yet ruled on a challenge to the constitutionality of the gun charges.Hunter Biden faces separate tax counts in Los Angeles alleging he failed to pay at least $1.4m in taxes over three years while living an “extravagant lifestyle”, during his days of using drugs. The judge overseeing that case refused to dismiss the charges this month.Biden has pleaded not guilty in both cases. A representative for his legal team didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.The president’s son has acknowledged struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine during that period in 2018, but his lawyers have said he didn’t break the law and another nonviolent, first-time offender would not have been charged.The defense attorney Abbe Lowell had argued Hunter Biden was “selectively charged” for improper political purposes. He argued that Weiss “buckled under political pressure” to indict the president’s son amid criticism of the plea deal from Trump and other Republicans.Noreika said in her ruling that Biden’s team had provided “nothing concrete” to support a conclusion that anyone actually influenced the special counsel’s team.“The pressure campaign from congressional Republicans may have occurred around the time that special counsel decided to move forward with indictment instead of pretrial diversion, but the court has been given nothing credible to suggest that the conduct of those lawmakers (or anyone else) had any impact on special counsel,” the judge wrote. “It is all speculation.” More

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      Hunter Biden asks Los Angeles judge to toss out $1.4m tax evasion case

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      Attorneys representing Hunter Biden asked a US judge in Los Angeles to dismiss the criminal case accusing him of evading $1.4m in taxes, arguing that prosecutors bowed to political pressure from Republican lawmakers investigating his father, Joe Biden.Hunter’s lawyers appeared before the US district judge Mark Scarsi in federal court in Los Angeles on Wednesday to press several legal challenges to the charges, including an argument that he was selectively targeted by prosecutors in response to Republican criticism. The 54-year-old was not present in the courtroom.Hunter has pleaded not guilty to failing to pay $1.4m in taxes between 2016 and 2019, while spending millions of dollars on drugs, escorts, exotic cars and other big-ticket items. His lawyer has said he paid back the money in full.US district judge Mark Scarsi appeared to give a skeptical reception to dismissal request. At the hearing, Scarsi asked whether Hunter’s lawyers had any evidence that prosecutors had caved to pressure from Republicans, other than the fact that they filed charges after months of accusations by Republicans in Congress and Donald Trump that he had been treated leniently.“Do you have any evidence other than the timeline?” Scarsi asked Hunter’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell.Lowell acknowledged that “it’s a timeline, but it’s a juicy timeline.”Scarsi also voiced skepticism about Hunter’s defense team’s argument that prosecutors had been pressured by two Internal Revenue Service agents who went public last year with information about his tax returns.“How are they responsible for what’s in the indictment?” Scarsi asked.“I can’t make the connection that that’s why that happened,” Lowell said, later adding that: “It was those two agents that started the dominoes.”Leo Wise, one of the prosecutors on the case, said it was “patently absurd” that the agents had influenced prosecutors.The trial of the president’s youngest son is due to start in June, a few months before Americans vote in a November presidential election that looks set to be a close and deeply divisive contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.Hunter also faces a separate criminal case in federal court in Delaware over his alleged purchase of a handgun while he was using illegal drugs. He has pleaded not guilty and made similar arguments to dismiss the charges in that case.The special counsel David Weiss, who brought both cases, has accused Hunter Biden’s legal team of spreading “conspiracy theories” about the prosecution. He has said the justice department would not act at the direction of Republican lawmakers, who are pursuing an impeachment investigation into whether Joe Biden profited from his son’s activities. The inquiry has turned up no evidence that the president personally benefited.Hunter is also seeking to toss out the charges by arguing that Weiss, who has investigated him since 2019, was improperly appointed special counsel.Hunter’s defense team has also argued that the case is barred by an earlier plea deal the president’s son struck with prosecutors. The deal collapsed under questioning from a federal judge last year. Prosecutors have said it never took effect. More

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      Trump Georgia case: judge says he hopes to have decision on whether to disqualify Fani Willis in two weeks – live

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      A lawyer for one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case has argued that not removing Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, would undermine public confidence in the legal system.John Merchant, an attorney for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, argued that just “an appearance of a conflict of interest” between Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade would be “sufficient” to disqualify her from the election subversion case.Merchant told Judge Scott McAfee that “if the court allows this kind of behavior to go on … the entire public confidence in the system will be shot”, AP reported.If the judge denies the bid to disqualify Willis, “there’s a good chance” an appeals court would overturn that ruling and order a new trial, Merchant argued, it writes.The Republican senator for Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, has endorsed Nikki Haley in the GOP presidential primary, marking the first endorsement from a sitting senator for Haley.“I’m proud to endorse Gov Nikki Haley,” Murkowski said in a statement.
      America needs someone with the right values, vigor, and judgment to serve as our next President – and in this race, there is no one better than her.
      The endorsement comes just days before Super Tuesday, when Alaska and several other states will cast their ballots.Murkowski was among seven Republican senators who voted to convict Donald Trump for his alleged role in the January 6 insurrection.In closing arguments in the hearing to determine whether the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, should be disqualified from handling the Trump election interference case, lawyers for the district attorney’s office argued that the defendants had failed to show any actual conflict of interest.Adam Abbate, a lawyer with the district attorney’s office, accused the defendants’ attorneys of pushing “speculation and conjecture” and trying to harass and embarrass Willis with questions on the witness stand that have nothing to do with the issue at hand, AP reported.“We have absolutely no evidence that Ms Willis received any financial gain or benefit” from the relationship, Abbate told the judge.Judge Scott McAfee has said he hopes to have a resolution on the motion to disqualify the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, from the case she brought against Donald Trump within the next two weeks.The hearing is now adjourned.It’s been a big day for two of Donald Trump’s most significant court cases. In the matter of the classified documents found in his possession at Mar-a-Lago, judge Aileen Cannon sounded skeptical of prosecutors’ request for a July trial, but did not set a new date. In the case alleging meddling in Georgia’s 2020 election, Trump’s attorneys argued for the removal of district attorney Fani Willis, saying failing to do so would undermine faith in the legal system. Willis is now in court as her office is expected to argue why it should remain on the case.Here’s what else is going on today:
      Joe Biden said the United States would airdrop aid into Gaza, and may also make deliveries by sea, while calling on Israel to facilitate access by land.
      Trump said Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, is a potential candidate to be his vice-president.
      Nikki Haley campaigned in Virginia ahead of its primary next week, and was interrupted by protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
      Meanwhile, in Georgia, Fani Willis is back in the courtroom where a judge is considering whether to remove her from the election meddling case she brought against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants:Joe Biden’s vow to get humanitarian aid into Gaza by air and potentially sea comes after more than 100 people were killed amid a scramble to pick up food in the besieged territory, leading even some of Israel’s allies to demand an investigation. Here’s more on that, from the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood, Emma Graham-Harrison and Julian Borger:Israel is facing growing international pressure for an investigation after more than 100 Palestinians in Gaza were killed when desperate crowds gathered around aid trucks and Israeli troops opened fire on Thursday.Israel said people died in a crush or were run over by aid lorries although it admitted its troops had opened fire on what it called a “mob”. But the head of a hospital in Gaza said 80% of injured people brought in had gunshot wounds.The UK called for an “urgent investigation and accountability”. In a statement, David Cameron, the foreign secretary, said: “The deaths of people in Gaza waiting for an aid convoy were horrific … this must not happen again.” Israel must allow more aid into Gaza, Lord Cameron added.France called for an independent investigation into the circumstances of the disaster, and Germany said the Israeli army must fully explain what happened. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said: “Every effort must be made to investigate what happened and ensure transparency.”The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 112 people were killed and more than 750 others were injured as crowds rushed towards a convoy of trucks carrying food aid.The United States will work with Jordan to drop food into Gaza by air and will consider make deliveries by sea, Joe Biden said, while noting he will “insist” Israel allow more trucks bearing aid to enter the territory by land.“In the coming days, we are going to join with our friends in Jordan and others in providing airdrops of additional food and supplies into [Gaza] and seek to continue to open up other avenues into [Gaza], including the possibility of a marine corridor to deliver large amounts of humanitarian assistance,” Biden said in the Oval Office. The president initially misspoke, saying the airdrops would be done in Ukraine rather than Gaza.“In addition to expanding deliveries by land, as I said, we’re going to insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need. No excuses, because the truth is aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough now – it’s nowhere nearly enough. Innocent lives are on the line and children’s lives are on the line.”In a statement released just as Joe Biden announced the US would airdrop humanitarian aid into Gaza, the independent senator Bernie Sanders called on the president to approve such action – while also insisting the onus lay on Israel to help civilians.“The United States, which has helped fund the Israeli military for years, cannot sit back and allow hundreds of thousands of innocent children to starve to death. As a result of Israeli bombing and restrictions on humanitarian aid, the people of Gaza are facing an unprecedented humanitarian disaster. Whether Netanyahu’s rightwing government likes it or not, the United States must immediately begin to airdrop food, water, and other lifesaving supplies into Gaza,” the progressive lawmaker from Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats, wrote.Here’s more:
      But while an airdrop will buy time and save lives, there is no substitute for sustained ground deliveries of what is needed to sustain life in Gaza. Israel MUST open the borders and allow the United Nations to deliver supplies in sufficient quantities. The United States should make clear that failure to do so immediately will lead to a fundamental break in the U.S. – Israeli relationship and the immediate halt of all military aid.
      The US will begin airdropping humanitarian aid into Gaza, Joe Biden has said.Biden said the airdrops will begin in the “coming days”, an announcement that came a day after more than 100 Palestinians in Gaza were killed when desperate crowds gathered around aid trucks and Israeli troops opened fire.Donald Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow has argued that Fani Willis should be disqualified from the election interference case because she may have lied to the court about her undisclosed affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.Sadow said Willis’s claim under oath that her relationship with Wade did not begin until after she hired him was not credible, Reuters reports. He told the judge:
      Once you have the appearance of impropriety … the law in Georgia is clear: That’s enough to disqualify.
      Joe Biden has signed into law a short-term stopgap spending bill to avert a partial government shutdown, the White House has said.The bill was approved by the Senate on Thursday following a House vote that narrowly averted a shutdown that was due to occur this weekend.The temporary extension funds the departments of agriculture, transportation, interior and others through 8 March. It funds the Pentagon, homeland security, health and state through 22 March.A lawyer for one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case has argued that not removing Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, would undermine public confidence in the legal system.John Merchant, an attorney for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, argued that just “an appearance of a conflict of interest” between Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade would be “sufficient” to disqualify her from the election subversion case.Merchant told Judge Scott McAfee that “if the court allows this kind of behavior to go on … the entire public confidence in the system will be shot”, AP reported.If the judge denies the bid to disqualify Willis, “there’s a good chance” an appeals court would overturn that ruling and order a new trial, Merchant argued, it writes.Judge Scott McAfee has said he might be able to make a decision on the hearing on Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis as he hears closing arguments in the case. CNN quotes him as saying:
      I think we’ve reached the point where I’d like to hear more of how the legal argument apply to what has already been presented, and it may already be possible for me to make a decision without those needing to be material to that decision.
      Closing arguments began about half an hour ago over whether Willis should be disqualified from handling the election interference against Trump because of her romantic relationship with a deputy handling the case. More

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      Ex-FBI informant charged with lying about Bidens arrested again

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      The former FBI informant who is charged with lying about a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving Joe Biden’s family was again taken into custody in Las Vegas, two days after a judge released him, his attorneys said.Alexander Smirnov was arrested during a meeting on Thursday morning at his lawyers’ offices in downtown Las Vegas. The arrest came after prosecutors appealed the judge’s ruling allowing 43-year-old Smirnov, who holds dual US-Israeli citizenship, to be released with a GPS monitor ahead of trial. He is charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record.Attorneys David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld said in a statement that they have requested an immediate hearing on his detention and will again push for his release. They said Smirnov, who claims to have links to Russian intelligence, was taken into custody on a warrant issued in California for the same charges.Smirnov was first arrested last week in Las Vegas, where he now lives, while returning from overseas. A spokesman for justice department special counsel David Weiss, who is prosecuting Smirnov, confirmed that Smirnov had been arrested again, but did not have additional comment.Prosecutors say Smirnov falsely told his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Joe and Hunter Biden $5m each around 2015. The claim became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry of President Biden in Congress.Smirnov has not entered a plea to the charges, but his lawyers have said their client is presumed innocent and they look forward to defending him at trial.As part of their push to keep him in custody, prosecutors said Smirnov told investigators after his arrest last week that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden. They said Smirnov’s self-reported contact with Russian officials was recent and extensive, and said he had planned to meet with foreign intelligence contacts during an upcoming trip abroad.US magistrate judge Daniel Albregts said on Tuesday that he was concerned about Smirnov’s access to money that prosecutors estimated to be around $6m, but noted that federal guidelines required him to fashion “the least restrictive conditions” ahead of trial. Smirnov was also ordered to stay in the area and surrender his passports.“Do not make a mockery out of me,” Albregts said to Smirnov, warning that he’d be placed back into the federal government’s custody if he violated any of his conditions. His lawyers say he had been “fully compliant” with his release conditions.Prosecutors quickly appealed to US district judge Otis D Wright in California.“The circumstances of the offenses charged – that Smirnov lied to his FBI handler after a 10-year relationship where the two spoke nearly every day – means that Smirnov cannot be trusted to provide truthful information to pretrial services,” prosecutors wrote in court documents.“The effects of Smirnov’s false statements and fabricated information continue to be felt to this day. Now the personal stakes for Smirnov are even higher. His freedom is on the line.”Smirnov had been an informant for more than a decade when he made the explosive allegations about the Bidens in June 2020, after “expressing bias” about Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, prosecutors said.But Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Burisma starting in 2017, according to court documents. No evidence has emerged that Joe Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice president.While his identity wasn’t publicly known before the indictment, Smirnov’s claims have played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark what is now a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. Republicans pursuing investigations of the Bidens demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if they were true.Democrats called for an end to the investigation after the Smirnov indictment came down last week, while Republicans distanced the inquiry from his claims and said they would continue to “follow the facts.”Smirnov’s lawyers say he has been living in Las Vegas for two years with his longtime girlfriend and requires treatment and daily medications for “significant medical issues related to his eyes”. He lived in California for 16 years prior to moving to Nevada. More

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      Russia-linked Biden accuser charged with lying? Who cares, Republicans say

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      Congress should publicly investigate the case of Alexander Smirnov, the FBI informant charged with lying about corruption involving Joe Biden and linked to Russian intelligence, a leading lawyer said, adding that senior Republicans who pushed Smirnov’s claims should be forced to testify.“The Senate should open an immediate investigation into the Alexander Smirnov scandal – with public hearings,“ said Tristan Snell, formerly a prosecutor on the Trump University fraud case, now author of Taking Down Trump, a book on the former president’s many legal challenges.“Bring Smirnov in to testify,” Snell added. “And then bring Jim Jordan, James Comer and Elise Stefanik in right behind him. This is a national security breach of the highest order.”Stefanik, from New York, is the Republican House conference chair and a prominent supporter of Donald Trump, the probable presidential nominee whose desire for revenge for his own impeachments is widely held to motivate Republican attempts to impeach Joe Biden in return.Jordan, from Ohio, is the House judiciary chair. On Wednesday, his committee and the oversight panel, chaired by Comer of Kentucky, interviewed James Biden about his business affairs and links to his older brother, the president. Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, is due to be interviewed next week.The bombshell news of Smirnov’s ties to Russian intelligence exploded the night before, in filings related to his arrest in Nevada. After James Biden’s interview, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the oversight committee, told Republicans it was time to bring to an end the “circus” of attempts to impeach the president.Republicans were not listening. Charges against Smirnov and news of his links with Russian intelligence did not “change the fundamental facts” of the case, Jordan told reporters, rehashing claims about Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian energy company and the supposed involvement of his father.One reporter, Manu Raju of CNN, pushed back, referring to an FBI document containing claims Smirnov is now charged with making up, possibly in connection with Russian intelligence, a document senior Republicans used eagerly as they pushed their claims.“You said the 1023 is the most corroborating piece of information you have,” Raju said to Jordan. “But it’s not true!”Comer, the leader of the impeachment effort, also showed little sign of concern with the truth. Reaching for Trump-like language, he told the rightwing Newsmax network Democrats were “going to play the Russia card again”, a reference to investigations of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow which dogged Trump’s term in office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That’s what Dan Goldman’s done, that’s what Jamie Raskin’s done,” Comer said, referring to prominent Democratic voices calling for impeachment efforts to end.Goldman, from New York, told CNN: “Wittingly or unwittingly, House Republicans have been acting as an agent or an asset of Russian intelligence.”Raskin said Republicans “just say, ‘Russia hoax Russia hoax.’ What part of it is the hoax? Is it the war in Ukraine? Is it the death of [Alexander] Navalny? What is hoax-like about it?“The hoax is that there’s a Russian hoax. There’s not a Russian hoax. There has been a series of efforts by Vladimir Putin to destabilize and undermine American political democracy.” More

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      Biden brother testifies as key witness’s Russia links cloud impeachment push

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      Joe Biden’s younger brother, James Biden, testified to the House oversight and judiciary committees on Wednesday, a closed-door session held even as Republican attempts to impeach the president for alleged corruption teetered on the edge of collapse.In a combative opening statement, released to the press, James Biden denied that his brother had ever been involved in his financial affairs and called anyone alleging otherwise “mistaken, ill-informed or flat-out lying”.Hunter Biden, the president’s son whose troubled personal life, legal jeopardy and complex business affairs provide the chief fuel for Republican allegations, is due to be interviewed in private next week.All the while, Washington will continue to digest and debate the news that a former FBI informant charged with making up a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving the Bidens and Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, had contacts with officials affiliated with Russian intelligence.Prosecutors revealed the alleged contact on Tuesday, as they urged a judge to keep Alexander Smirnov in custody before trial.Smirnov is charged with falsely reporting to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with Burisma paid Hunter Biden and Joe Biden $5m each in 2015 or 2016, when Joe Biden was vice-president to Barack Obama.Donald Trump’s first impeachment was fueled by his search for dirt on the Bidens related to Ukraine. Smirnov’s claim has been central to Republican attempts to impeach Biden in return, and was therefore eagerly promoted by senior Republicans and their rightwing media allies, particularly on Fox News.Smirnov was taken into custody at a facility in rural Pahrump, Nevada, west of Las Vegas, last week. Prosecutors said that before his arrest, Smirnov admitted “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden. They said Smirnov’s contacts with Russian officials were recent and extensive and Smirnov had planned to meet one official on a future trip.They said Smirnov had numerous contacts with a person he described as the “son of a former high-ranking government official” and “someone with ties to a particular Russian intelligence service”.Prosecutors also said there was a serious risk Smirnov could flee. David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, defense attorneys, said they were asking for Smirnov’s release “so he can effectively fight the power of the government”. The judge ruled that Smirnov should be released on bond.The White House did not immediately comment. But Politico quoted “a person close to Joe Biden” as saying: “Obviously there’s a case that’ll have to play out here. But based on the indictment and filing, it lays bare how unscrupulous the entire [Republican party] and their enablers in rightwing media have become.“Republicans in Congress ought to be facing the crushing burden of a massive scandal of their own making right now: an impeachment based on what might be a Russian intelligence operation. If nothing else, a criminal lie, based on the indictment.”According to prosecutors, Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Burisma, starting in 2017, when Joe Biden was out of office. Smirnov made the bribery allegations, prosecutors said, after “express[ing] bias” against Biden while he was a presidential candidate in 2020, against Trump.After Smirnov was indicted, Democrats called for an end to the impeachment inquiry. Republicans dsaid they would continue to “follow the facts”. However, James Comer, the oversight chair, is reportedly considering whether it to stage a vote on a Biden impeachment – particularly after the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, first failed then squeaked through by a single vote.On Wednesday, two far-right Republicans, Jim Jordan and Andy Biggs, told CNN the Smirnov revelations did not change their determination to push on. Biggs claimed: “We have lots of evidence.”CNN also quoted an aide to the impeachment inquiry as saying the inclusion then deletion of a reference to Smirnov in a letter to a potential witness, first reported by the Huffington Post, was simply a clerical error.James Biden, Republicans’ target on Wednesday, is a businessman long linked to his brother’s political career.Now 74, and known in the family as Jimmy, recent duties have included overseeing Oval Office decorations including a bust of the labour organiser Cesar Chavez, sketches of the anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass, and a rugby ball from Rob and Dave Kearney, Biden cousins and international players for Ireland.Republicans allege personal cheques, addressed by James Biden to Joe Biden when the latter was out of office, represent evidence of corruption. Multiple news outlets have said the cheques simply repaid personal loans.In 2022, James Biden used a rare interview to say: “I’m the guy who assists in everything. When it comes to my family, I try to be as supportive as I can. But this notion of ‘fixer’, or any reference that has a negative connotation, is offensive.”According to the Washington Post, James Biden repeatedly said he should not be talking to a reporter while his wife, Sara, advised him to put down the phone.“Talk to a real person who knows me,” James Biden said. “Guess what? There’s not many who do.”On Wednesday, in his opening statement to the Republican-led committees, he outlined “four critical points.“One: 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. None.“Two: Because of my intimate knowledge of my brother’s personal integrity and character, as well as my own strong ethics, I have always kept my professional life separate from our close personal relationship.“Three: I never asked my brother to take any official action on behalf of me, my business associates or anyone else.“Four: In every business venture in which I have been involved, I have relied on my own talent, judgment, skill and personal relationships and never my status as Joe Biden’s brother. Those who have said or thought otherwise were either mistaken, ill-informed or flat-out lying.”Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      FBI informant charged with lying about Bidens’ role in Ukraine business

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      An FBI informant has been charged with lying to his handler about ties between Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company.Alexander Smirnov falsely told FBI agents in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5m each in 2015 and 2016, prosecutors said on Thursday.Smirnov told the FBI that a Burisma executive had claimed to have hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems”, prosecutors said in a statement.The allegations became a flashpoint in Congress over the summer as Republicans demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the allegations as they pursued investigations of Biden and his family. They acknowledged at the time that it was unclear if the allegations were true.The new development sharply undermines the thrust of congressional Republicans’ corruption accusations that the US president was making money from his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine.Smirnov, 43, was charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record. No attorney was immediately listed for him in court records.Smirnov appeared in court in Las Vegas briefly on 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 charges were filed by the justice department special counsel David Weiss, who has separately charged Hunter with firearm and tax violations.Hunter’s legal team did not immediately return a message seeking comment.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.Prosecutors say Smirnov had contact with Burisma executives, but it was routine and actually took place in 2017, after Barack Obama, the US president, and Biden, his vice-president, had left office – when Biden would have had no ability to influence US 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 last year 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 House oversight committee chairman James Comer, a Republican representing Kentucky, had subpoenaed the FBI last year for the so-called FD-1023 document as Republicans deepened their inquiries into the US president and Hunter ahead of the 2024 presidential election.Working alongside Comer, the Republican senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa released an unclassified document that Republicans at the time claimed was significant in their investigation of Hunter.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. The White House said at the time that the claims 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 is expected to appear before the committee later this month for an interview.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Hunter Biden to appear before House Republicans for private deposition

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      Hunter Biden has agreed to appear before House Republicans for a private deposition next month, ending months of defiance from the president’s son, who had insisted on testifying publicly.The House oversight committee announced on Thursday that the two parties have come to an agreement for Hunter Biden to sit for a deposition on 28 February.“His deposition will come after several interviews with Biden family members and associates,” Representative James Comer, the chairman of the oversight committee, and Representative Jim Jordan, the chairman of the jJudiciary panel, said in a statement. “We look forward to Hunter Biden’s testimony.”Republicans had been set to advance a contempt resolution against him to the House floor this week but called it off on Tuesday to give the attorneys additional time to reach an agreement. More

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      Republicans’ bid to hold Hunter Biden in contempt appears to be suspended

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      Efforts by House Republicans to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress appear to be in suspension following new discussions with his attorneys that could lead to the president’s son testifying in the near future.The development follows Biden’s surprise appearance at a congressional oversight committee meeting last week during which the Republicans complained he was refusing to make himself available in defiance of their subpoena for closed-door testimony.The panel, in parallel with the judiciary committee, voted to progress contempt resolutions to the full House anyway.Now both resolutions are on hold as both sides seek cooperation over a new date for him to testify in the Republican-led impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. It follows lawyers for Biden writing to the chairs of both committees, Republicans James Comer of Kentucky and Jim Jordan of Ohio, stating their subpoenas were “legally invalid” because they predated December’s House vote authorizing the impeachment push, NBC News reported.Both chairs said they would issue new subpoenas, the network said, and were willing to recommend delaying the contempt vote if Biden “genuinely cooperated … and worked to set a date for a closed-door deposition”.Biden had previously insisted he would be willing to testify to the committees only in open session, but his attorneys have since said they would accept new subpoenas to give evidence in private.“If you issue a new proper subpoena, now that there is a duly authorized impeachment inquiry, Mr Biden will comply for a hearing or deposition,” his lead lawyer, Abbe Lowell, wrote to Comer and Jordan.“We will accept such a subpoena on Mr Biden’s behalf.”Lowell did not immediately respond to a request for further comment, NBC said, but an oversight committee spokesperson’s comments to the network on Tuesday suggest negotiations have advanced.“Following an exchange of letters between the parties on January 12 and January 14, staff for the committees and lawyers for Hunter Biden are working to schedule Hunter Biden’s appearance,” the spokesperson said.“Negotiations are ongoing this afternoon, and in conjunction with the disruption to member travel and canceling votes, the House rules committee isn’t considering the contempt resolution today to give the attorneys additional time to reach an agreement.”Republicans want Biden’s testimony as they look into unproven allegations of corruption involving his father, with Democrats accusing them of seeking it in private because they know there is no evidence that would implicate the president.“We are here today because the chairman has bizarrely decided to obstruct his own investigation and is now seeking to hold Hunter Biden in contempt after he accepted the chairman’s multiple public offers to come answer the committee’s questions under oath before the American people,” the Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin told last week’s oversight hearing.The meeting quickly descended into farce when Biden appeared in the company of his lawyers, and Democratic members pleaded with Comer to let him testify, to no avail.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLowell held a gaggle with reporters outside the committee room after Biden walked out just as the firebrand Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene was rising to speak.“Republican chairs … are commandeering an unprecedented resolution to hold somebody in contempt who has offered to publicly answer all their proper questions. The question there is, what are they afraid of?” he said.Democrats see the contempt moves against Biden, and the “baseless” impeachment inquiry against his father, as part of a wider effort to smear the president as he seeks re-election later this year.In a separate development reported by NBC, Hunter Biden’s Hollywood attorney, Kevin Morris, is scheduled to speak with members of the House oversight, judiciary and ways and means committees for “transcribed interviews” on Thursday.Biden pleaded not guilty to federal tax charges in Los Angeles last week, prosecutors alleging he engaged “in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4m in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019”.Morris has emerged as a key figure and “fixer” in Biden’s California troubles and appeared at his side in Congress last week.According to NBC, Morris began advising Biden in 2020 and arranged to pay about $2m outstanding tax obligations to the IRS during the following two years. More