We may finally have turned a corner. The Washington Post is reporting that an IRS whistleblower has made “detailed and potentially damning” claims about how the DOJ handled the Hunter Biden investigation.
The agent, Gary Shapley, offered a detailed and potentially damning account of prosecutors who were either timid or disinterested when it came to examining the financial misdeeds of Hunter Biden, which Shapley said includedinstances in which the president’s son treated prostitutes and their travel costs as his business expenses.
Looking at the actual transcript, Shapley said, “I am alleging, with evidence, that DOJ provided preferential treatment, slow-walked the investigation, did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation.” A bit later in his statement he added, “the criminal tax investigation of Hunter Biden, led by the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware, has been handled differently than any investigation I’ve ever been a part of for the past 14 years of my IRS service.”
There are several elements here that deserve attention starting with a text message Hunter Biden sent in 2017. It read:
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” the younger Biden allegedly told businessman Henry Zhao. “And Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”
Wowza! That message was apparently sent from the guest house at Joe Biden’s Delaware home where Hunter was living at the time. Shapley believed it was enough for a search warrant. But an assistant US attorney named Lesley Wolf told him in September 2020 that while there was probably cause for a warrant she questioned whether the juice was worth squeeze. “She said a lot of evidence in our investigation would be found in the guest house of former Vice President Biden, but said there is no way we will get that approved,” Shapley said.
The next day, Sep. 4, Deputy Attorney General Donoghue shut down the entire investigation citing the nearness of the election. It was set to pick up again after the election. But after the election, the election was being contested by President Trump so there were more delays.
Finally on Dec. 3, 2020 there was a 12-hour meeting about gearing up again. Here’s what Shapley said happened during that meeting:
We shared with prosecutors our outline to interview Hunter Biden’s associate, Rob Walker. Among other things, we wanted to question Walker about an email that said: “Ten held by H for the big guy.” We had obvious questions like who was H, who the big guy was, and why this percentage was to be held separately with the association hidden.
But AUSA Wolf interjected and said she did not want to ask about the big guy and stated she did not want to ask questions about “dad.” When multiple people in the room spoke up and objected that we had to ask, she responded, there’s no specific criminality to that line of questioning.
This upset the FBI too.
The FBI made a plan to interview Hunter Biden on Dec. 8 but by that point he had a Secret Service detail and FBI headquarters let them know the investigators were coming. When they went to Hunter’s California home, they passed along a number and later got a call from his attorney who said they could not speak to his client.
The Post reports that the even bigger news in the whistleblower statement involves testimony AG Merrick Garland gave under oath. Garland claimed that Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who was a Trump holdover, was in charge of the investigation. But Shapley, the whistleblower, said that wasn’t true. In fact, at a meeting held last October, Weiss explicitly told everyone involved in the investigation that he wasn’t able to file charges in DC or California.
Weiss then surprised the agents, Shapley said, by saying that “the Biden-appointed D.C. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves would not allow him to charge in his District.” Up until that point, Shapley said, he had expected Biden would face the most serious tax-related charges in Washington, because that’s where he was living in 2014, when Shapley said he believes Biden’s most serious misconduct occurred…
Shapley said he was later told that another possible jurisdiction to bring charges, California, had also rejected them.
Going back to Shapley’s full statement:
Attorney General Merrick Garland appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee on April 26th, 2022. Senator Bill Hagerty asked him how the American people could be confident that the administration was conducting a serious investigation into the President’s own son.
Garland testified: “Because we put the investigation in the hands of a Trump appointee from the previous administration, who is the United States Attorney for the District of Delaware, and because you have me as the Attorney General, who is committed to the independence of the Justice Department from any influence from the White House in criminal matters.”…
From March 2022 through October 7th, 2022, I was under the impression that, based on AG Garland’s testimony before Congress and statements by U.S. Attorney Weiss and prosecutors, that they were still deciding whether to charge 2014 and 2015 tax violations.
However, I would later be told by United States Attorney Weiss that the D.C. U.S. Attorney would not allow U.S. Attorney Weiss to charge those years in his district. This resulted in United States Attorney Weiss requesting special counsel authority from Main DOJ to charge in the District of Columbia. I don’t know if he asked before or after the Attorney General’s April 26th, 2022, statement, but Weiss said his request for that authority was denied and that he was told to follow DOJ’s process.
That process meant no charges would ever be brought in the District of Columbia, where the statute of limitations on the 2014 and ’15 charges would eventually expire. The years in question included foreign income from Burisma and a scheme to evade his income taxes through a partnership with a convicted felon. There were also potential FARA issues relating to 2014 and 2015. The purposeful exclusion of the 2014 and 2015 years sanitized the most substantive criminal conduct and concealed material facts…
The next meeting was in person on October 7th, 2022, and it took place in the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office. This meeting included only senior-level managers from IRS CI, FBI, and the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office. This ended up being my red-line meeting in our investigation for me.
United States Attorney Weiss was present for the meeting. He surprised us by telling us on the charges, quote: “I’m not the deciding official on whether charges are filed,” unquote.
He then shocked us with the earth-shattering news that the Biden-appointed D.C. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves would not allow him to charge in his district.
So the Trump holdover who AG Garland pointed to as a guarantee that the investigation would be free of bias was in fact hamstrung behind the scenes by partisans who refused to let him charge the most serious crimes. Shapley says that as a result of this it’s not even possible to get Hunter Biden to pay taxes on $400,000 of income he has never reported. Unless Hunter volunteers it, they can’t do anything.
Shapley alleges that after he complained about what was happening he went from the highest possible performance ratings to being retaliated against.
I continually reported these issues up to IRS CI leadership beginning in the summer of 2020. Now, because they realize I documented their conduct, they separate me out, cease all communication, and are now attempting to salvage their own conduct by attacking mine. This is an attempt by the U.S. Attorney’s Office to tarnish my good standing and position with IRS CI, and I expect IRS CI leadership to understand that…
For over a year, I’ve had trouble sleeping and wake all hours of night thinking about this. After some time, I realized it was because I subconsciously knew they were not doing the right thing, but I could not fathom concluding that the United States Attorney’s Office or DOJ Tax were in the wrong.
After I wrapped my mind around the fact that they were not infallible, I started to sleep better. My choice was to turn a blind eye to their malfeasance and not sleep or to put myself in the crosshairs by doing the right thing. My conscience chose the latter.
Shapley said the case was dropped when California declined to bring any charges but that after he came forward earlier this year he began to hear that the case was being picked up again. However, the people (like himself) who’d already spent years on the case were all removed. An entirely new IRS team was put in place.
There’s a lot more here. I’ve only gone through the first 30 pages of his statement but this seems very explosive. Based on Shapley’s statement it certainly sounds as if the fix was in to protect Hunter Biden from any serious prosecution and it also seems as if Attorney General Merrick Garland has been lying about how this was run. That or he’s too dim to know what’s happening.
Read the full article here
