VIENNA (AP) — Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg will serve as the country's interim leader while the far-right Freedom Party attempts to put together a new coalition government, the president's office said Wednesday.
Schallenberg, 55, will take on the duties of outgoing Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who announced his resignation over the weekend after his efforts to put together a coalition without the Freedom Party collapsed. Nehammer plans to step down on Friday.
President Alexander Van der Bellen's office said in a statement that the head of state will formally task Schallenberg with “continuing the management of the chancellery and leading the interim government.”
It will be Schallenberg’s second — and, again, likely brief — stint as Austria’s leader. Schallenberg served as chancellor for less than two months in late 2021 after the resignation of Sebastian Kurz, before passing the job to Nehammer and returning to the Foreign Ministry.
The anti-immigration, euroskeptic and Russia-friendly Freedom Party won Austria’s parliamentary election in September, but was initially shunned by other parties.
After Nehammer announced his resignation, his conservative Austrian People’s Party made an abrupt U-turn on its previous refusal to contemplate working with the Freedom Party under its leader, Herbert Kickl.
On Monday, Kickl received a mandate to try to form what would be the first national government led by the far right since World War II. That's a process that could take weeks or months, and isn't guaranteed to succeed.
Schallenberg, who spent much of his earlier career as a diplomat, has been foreign minister since 2019 apart from his brief previous interlude as chancellor. He has said he wouldn’t stay in the government under Kickl.
Kickl says he will approach talks on a coalition with clear expectations of the People's Party, including “an awareness of who won the election" and “an understanding of who is responsible for the mistakes of the past." He said he's prepared for new elections if talks fail.
The conservatives' interim leader, Christian Stocker, said Wednesday he will meet Kickl. He says he wants “honest answers to questions that are important for us and Austria.”
“There must be an honest answer to whether we want to be a constructive and reliable part of the European Union, or the opposite,” he said. “There must be an honest answer to whether we want to orient ourselves toward the free world, or toward dictatorships.”
The leader of Austria's Freedom Party, Herbert Kickl, addresses a news conference, in Vienna, Austria, Tuesday, Jan 7, 2025. Herbert Kickl received a mandate Monday to try to form a new government. (AP Photo/Heinz-Peter Bader)
FILE -Austria's Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg speaks with the media as he arrives for a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the European Council building in Brussels, Dec. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A former FBI informant who fabricated a story about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter accepting bribes that became central to Republicans’ impeachment effort was sentenced Wednesday to six years in prison.
Alexander Smirnovpleaded guilty last month in Los Angeles federal court to tax evasion and lying to the FBI about the phony bribery scheme in what prosecutors say was an effort to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Smirnov, a dual U.S. and Israeli citizen, falsely claimed to his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid then-Vice President Biden and his son $5 million each around 2015.
Smirnov's explosive claim in 2020 came after he expressed "bias” about Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, according to prosecutors. In reality, investigators found Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Burisma starting in 2017 — after Biden's term as vice president.
Prosecutors noted that Smirnov's false claim “set off a firestorm in Congress” when it resurfaced years later as part of the House impeachment inquiry into President Biden, a Democrat who defeated Republican then-President Donald Trump in 2020. The Biden administration dismissed the House impeachment effort as a “stunt.”
Before Smirnov’s arrest, Republicans had demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if they were true.
"In committing his crimes he betrayed the United States, a country that showed him nothing but generosity, including conferring on him the greatest honor it can bestow, citizenship," Justice Department special counsel David Weiss' team wrote in court papers. "He repaid the trust the United States placed in him to be a law-abiding naturalized citizen and, more specifically, that one of its premier law enforcement agencies placed in him to tell the truth as a confidential human source, by attempting to interfere in a Presidential election."
Smirnov will get credit for the time he has served behind bars since his arrest last February in the case accusing him of lying to the FBI. Prosecutors in November brought new tax charges alleging he concealed millions of dollars of income he earned between 2020 and 2022.
Smirnov's lawyers had sought no more than four years behind bars, noting the “substantial assistance" he provided to the U.S. government as an FBI informant for more than a decade. Smirnov's lawyers noted in court papers that he suffers from serious health issues related to his eyes and argue that a lengthy sentence would “unnecessarily prolong his suffering.”
“Mr. Smirnov has learned a very grave lesson and proffers to this Honorable Court that he will not find himself on this side of the law again,” attorneys Richard Schonfeld and David Chesnoff told the judge in court papers.
Smirnov was prosecuted by Weiss, who also brought gun and tax charges against Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced in December after being convicted at a trial in the gun case and pleading guilty to tax charges. But he was pardoned by his father, who said he believed “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
In seeking a lighter sentence, Smirnov's lawyers wrote in court papers that both Hunter Biden and President-elect Trump — who was charged in two federal cases by a different special counsel — “have walked free and clear of any meaningful punishment.”
Special counsel Jack Smith abandoned the two federal cases against Trump — accusing him of conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss and hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida — after Trump's presidential victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in November.
Follow the AP's coverage of Hunter Biden at https://apnews.com/hub/hunter-biden.
FILE - In this courtroom sketch Defendant Alexander Smirnov speaks in Federal court in Los Angeles, Feb. 26, 2024. (William T. Robles via AP, File)
