🏛️ Biden_Axios AM: Dysfunction junction - btbirkett@gmail.com - Gmail

🏛️ Axios AM: Dysfunction junction - btbirkett@gmail.com - Gmail

3.  Feds: Biden informant claimed Russia ties

Hunter Biden talks to reporters outside the Capitol in December. Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP A former FBI informant, charged with making false bribery claims involving President Biden and his son Hunter, told federal officials he has ties to high-level Russian agents. Why it matters: Alexander Smirnov insisted that "officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved" in passing along a story about Hunter Biden, prosecutors write. The memo says the former informant bragged about: Numerous contacts with a Russian official who "purportedly controls two groups of individuals tasked with carrying out assassination efforts in a third-party country." Attending an overseas meeting with a "high-ranking member of a specific Russian foreign intelligence service" about a potential resolution to the war in Ukraine. Being told that Russian intelligence intercepted "several calls placed by prominent U.S. persons the Russian government may use as 'kompromat' in the 2024 election." FBI investigators deemed a similar story relayed by Smirnov to be false. In a separate filing, Hunter Biden's lawyers argued that the "rabbit hole of lies" allegedly told by the indicted FBI informant has infected the criminal case against the president's son, Axios' Sareen Habeshian reports.