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.

But Special Counsel David Weiss, who is prosecuting Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges, alleged on Feb. 14 that Smirnov had spun up a false story, and he was arrested at a Las Vegas airport after returning from overseas.

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Russia contact In a 28-page memo submitted Tuesday opposing bail for Smirnov, prosecutors said Smirov had admitted to having contacts with foreign intelligence services from countries including Russia.

“While Smirnov has no ties to the community in Las Vegas, what he does have is extensive foreign ties, including, most troublingly and by his own account, contact with foreign intelligence services, including Russian intelligence agencies, and has had such contacts recently,” Weiss wrote to the court. “Smirnov could use these contacts to resettle outside the United States” if released on bail.Weiss said that prosecutors were aware of Smirnov’s spy connections because he had shared them with his FBI handlers. Smirnov began working as an FBI informant in 2010 and was authorized to break some laws in that role, prosecutors said.

“As noted, law enforcement knows about Smirnov’s contact with officials affiliated with Russian intelligence because Smirnov himself reported on a number of those contacts to his FBI Handler,” Weiss wrote, adding, “...these contacts are extensive and extremely recent, and Smirnov had the intention of meeting with one of these officials on his upcoming planned overseas travel.”In October 2023, Smirnov reported "numerous contacts" with the person he described to his FBI handlers as the chief of two Russian assassination squads, and "as someone with ties to a particular Russian intelligence service," the memo said.

The informant also told his handlers of a "recent" overseas meeting with a second official, who he described as "a high-ranking member of a specific Russian foreign intelligence service," Weiss said.Millions of dollars

Lawyers for Smirnov and Hunter Biden couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

In arguing against bail, prosecutors said that Smirnov “has access to over $6 million in liquid funds – more than enough money for him to live comfortably overseas for the rest of his life,” and that he lied to the court about his assets, claiming to have only $1,500 in cash and $5,000 in a checking account.

President Biden is identified in the memorandum as "Public Official 1, an elected official in the Obama-Biden Administration who left office in January 2017," while Hunter Biden is referred to as "Businessperson 1."

Alison Chen at the Fei Tian College campus in Middletown, N.Y., on Sept. 19, 2023. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

Having performed with Shen Yun Performing Arts at the world’s top venues for more than a decade, Alison Chen has extended her trained classical artistry into a new passion.

One of the first classical Chinese dance professors at Fei Tian College in Middletown, Ms. Chen helped build up the dance department, created a minor degree, and launched an outreach program.

In the past two years, she has taken a small student ensemble to perform at local stages of all stripes, including at Legoland, Woodbury Commons, community festivals, school gyms, and senior centers.

Everywhere we go, people just keep telling us how peaceful our dancing is,” Ms. Chen, who often joins her students on stage, told The Epoch Times. “Every time we perform, it is like a gentle reminder for everyone that there are a lot of beautiful things to look forward to in their lives.”

Behind the growing performance list is her personal growth and that of students.

“When things are hard, I always think back to what we did in Shen Yun, like how we faced challenges head-on and how we treated each other like a family,” she said

Before long, Ms. Chen made it into Shen Yun, the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and music company, whose mission is to revive the genuine traditional Chinese culture that prevailed before the communists took over China.

“Those were the happiest years of my life,” she recalled of her time with the company, including several years as a principal dancer. “It didn’t matter how big or small my role was—I cherished every moment.

“Sometimes, I was pushed past my comfort zone and played characters completely unlike myself, but I never said no to a role, because I knew it would help me improve as an artist.”

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Fei Tian Dance Teacher Brings Classical Beauty to Local Stages

By Cara Ding

2/20/2024

Updated:

2/20/2024

0:00

7:22

Having performed with Shen Yun Performing Arts at the world’s top venues for more than a decade, Alison Chen has extended her trained classical artistry into a new passion.

One of the first classical Chinese dance professors at Fei Tian College in Middletown, Ms. Chen helped build up the dance department, created a minor degree, and launched an outreach program.

In the past two years, she has taken a small student ensemble to perform at local stages of all stripes, including at Legoland, Woodbury Commons, community festivals, school gyms, and senior centers.

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“Everywhere we go, people just keep telling us how peaceful our dancing is,” Ms. Chen, who often joins her students on stage, told The Epoch Times. “Every time we perform, it is like a gentle reminder for everyone that there are a lot of beautiful things to look forward to in their lives.”

Behind the growing performance list is her personal growth and that of students.

“When things are hard, I always think back to what we did in Shen Yun, like how we faced challenges head-on and how we treated each other like a family,” she said.

Shen Yun Years

A California native, Ms. Chen joined the New York-based Fei Tian Academy when she was 12. She was trained in classical Chinese dance and standard academics on a serene campus in Western Orange County.

The training was rigorous, and the standard was high. Day by day, she tempered her will and enlarged her capacity, often by drawing strength from caring students and teachers, she said.

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Alison Chen in a dance studio at the Fei Tian College campus in Middletown, N.Y., on Sept. 19, 2023. (Samira Bouaou/ The Epoch Times)

“Sometimes, I was pushed past my comfort zone and played characters completely unlike myself, but I never said no to a role, because I knew it would help me improve as an artist.”

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Shen Yun’s rehearsal facility sits on the same 400-acre Dragon Springs campus as Fei Tian Academy and Fei Tian College, where Ms. Chen later graduated from.

“Growing up at Dragon Springs, we learned that heart and art are tied together, and you have to search much more internally rather than just externally to make your dance better,” she said.

“When you are in that kind of environment, you learn to reflect on yourself as a person even from a young age.”

Most Shen Yun dancers and musicians practice Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, a spiritual practice rooted in Buddhist traditions that involves meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

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For the past 24 years, practitioners of this discipline have been consistently targeted by brutal persecution initiated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This, along with the fact that Shen Yun seeks to revive the traditional Chinese culture that’s been systematically suppressed by the regime since the beginning of its rule in 1949, is why the New York-based arts company cannot perform in China today.

Building Up a Dance Department

In 2016, Ms. Chen left Shen Yun and became a teacher at Northern Academy in Middletown, and two years later, she moved on to join Fei Tian College’s new campus, also in Middletown.

There, Ms. Chen and fellow classical Chinese dance and ballet teachers built up a new dance department under the guidance of college chair Tsuai Yung Yung, a prominent dancer from Taiwan

USANEWS

Tuesday, 20 February 2024

Indicted Biden accuser had 'extensive' contacts with Russian intel, prosecutors say