30 jili The former FBI informant who claimed he could prove that then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden were paid $5 million a piece by the owners of Ukrainian energy company Burisma now admits he made the whole thing up. Alexander Smirnov lied when he told the FBI that Hunter Biden, who sat on Burisma’s board while President Joe Biden was serving as No. 2 in the Obama White House, used his father’s political position to force the Ukrainian company into making payments to both Bidens in 2015 or 2016, he admitted in a plea deal revealed Thursday. “In truth and fact. Defendant had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016 — in other words, when (Biden) could not engage in any official act to influence U.S. policy,” the plea deal reads, in part. According to the plea, which serves as an admission to guilt on a felony count of lying to investigators and three more of tax evasion, Smirnov, took issue with the Bidens in 2020 for political reasons and told his FBI handler he had knowledge of corruption, but investigators later learned he was embellishing his access to company officials and inside information. “Defendant 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 plea reads, in part. Smirnov’s entirely-made-up version of events served as the backbone of a year-long effort by Congressional Republicans to drum up impeachment charges to levy against President Biden over his alleged role in the bribery scheme. Ohio’s U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said Smirnov’s assertion got to the “ heart ” of the GOP’s investigation into the Bidens, while House Oversight Chair U.S. Rep. James Comer, R-KY, called it “ a very crucial piece of our investigation. ” After Smirnov was arrested in February, prosecutors revealed much of the information he was sharing with his FBI handlers was coming from the Kremlin. “Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1,” they wrote , referring to Hunter Biden. Smirnov’s exact claims were made public in June of 2023, after U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley published a redacted version of the FBI form he used to spin his lies to his handlers. Ranking House Republican U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik told Fox News that the allegations represented “the biggest political corruption scandal, not only in my lifetime, but I would say the past 100 years.” Hunter Biden was recently pardoned by President Biden for any and all crimes he may have committed while working for Burisma and in the years that followed. ©2024 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at bostonherald.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Fluence Energy, Inc. Announces Closing of Offering of $400.0 Million of Convertible Senior Notes due 2030The Aurora City Council on Tuesday night approved a roughly $660,000 project to renovate the fourth floor of Aurora City Hall that would bring together the city’s full Finance Department on one floor. The item was passed as part of the consent agenda, so the item was not discussed at Tuesday’s meeting. A $659,674 contract with a 10% contingency was awarded to Lite Construction Inc, the lowest responsible bidder, for the construction work. At a City Council I nfrastructure and Technology Committee meeting last week, Aurora Chief Public Facilities Officer Jim Birchall said the renovation would “demo everything” on the fourth floor and rebuild from a “clean envelope,” including bringing in completely new furniture, redoing the bathrooms and upgrading the lighting to LEDs. The Finance Department’s current offices, most of which are on the first floor of City Hall, are “antiquated, with awkward allocation of space, and inadequate infrastructure” to meet the city’s needs, according to a staff report included with the City Council’s meeting agenda. The fourth floor’s offices are also currently “hodgepodge,” with some being too big and some being too small, so the plan is to take down the walls and build back up six private offices and 14 cubicles, Birchall said at the time. The bathrooms on the fourth floor will also be remodeled, and the bathrooms on the third and fifth floors will be brought up to the current building code, which requires floor drains. The heating and cooling system would be controlled by a rooftop unit dedicated to the fourth and fifth floors, so the temperature could be adjusted down when people are not in the offices to avoid heating a vacant space, Birchall previously said. The city is currently working with Lite Construction on a different project, the renovation of 745 Broadway, according to Birchall. Although they aren’t too deep into the project, he is happy with the work they are doing, he said last week. Also, when they checked Lite’s references, some architecture firms that have worked with them in the past have been “very, very happy with them,” Birchall said at the time. The staff report from the City Council meeting agenda said the empty space on the first floor left when the Finance Department moves out can be repurposed or combined with the city clerk’s office. rsmith@chicagotribune.com

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