The night before an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) criminal investigation team began looking into Hunter Biden’s tax crimes was set to conduct key interviews and approach Hunter for a consented search of his home, FBI headquarters allegedly tipped off “people very close to President Biden and Hunter Biden,” thwarting the investigation, according to a whistleblower testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee released Thursday.
Starting in January 2020, IRS criminal supervisory special agent and whistleblower Gary Shapley and his team of agents began investigating Hunter Biden for tax evasion after incriminating material was found on Hunter’s infamous laptop. “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,” Shapley told the committee.
One such instance of “preferential treatment” occurred before Shapley and his team’s “day of action,” where they were set to conduct 12 important interviews across the county and seek a “consent search of Hunter Biden’s residence” after nearly a year of investigating Hunter. The DOJ had already denied the IRS team a search warrant, despite “probable cause,” so the investigators were relying heavily on the interviews and a potential consent search.
On December 3rd, five days before the team’s planned “day of action,” they met with Delaware United States Attorney David Weiss and Assistant United States Attorney Lesley Wolf for 12 hours. During the meeting, Wolf told the team that she did not want them to ask the interviewees about Hunter’s father or references to “the big guy.” Wolf reportedly stated there was “no specific criminality to that line of questioning.”
At the meeting, the team devised “a plan for the FBI Los Angeles special agent in charge to reach out at 8 a.m. on December 8th to the Secret Service Los Angeles special agent in charge [of Hunter’s security detail] and tell them that we would be coming to the residence to seek an interview with Hunter Biden and that it was part of an official investigation.”
The night before the investigation, however, Shapley was told that “FBI headquarters had notified Secret Service headquarters and the transition team” about the day of action. “This essentially tipped off a group of people very close to President Biden and Hunter Biden and gave this group an opportunity to obstruct the approach on the witnesses,” said Shapley.
After the FBI interference, the agents were told that “the Secret Service protectees” would be given the phone numbers of Shapley and FBI Supervisory Special Agent Joe Gordon, and “the subjects” would call the agents if they felt like talking to them.
“SSA Gordon and I waited in the car outside of Hunter Biden’s California residence waiting for a phone call,” said Shapley. “It was no surprise that the phone call SSA Gordon received was from his ASAC Alfred Watson, who informed us that Hunter would contact us through his attorneys.”
Later that morning, the men received a call from Hunter’s attorneys, “who said he would accept service for any document requests, but we couldn’t talk to his client. The public news of our investigation hit the press the next day.”
“I can’t know for certain whether FBI’s advance notice played a role or not, but of the 12 interviews we hoped to conduct on our day of action, we only got one substantive interview,” said Shapley. “It was with Rob Walker in Arkansas, and it was exactly the sort of interview we expected to have if the FBI hadn’t tipped off Secret Service and the transition team,” he continued. Walker is a Biden associate who allegedly used his LLC to funnel money from the Chinese to Biden family members.
According to Shapley, the investigation into Hunter wasn’t even allowed to begin “due to the coming election,” with “Deputy Attorney General Donoghue issu[ing] a cease and desist of all overt investigative activities.” Even when the IRS team was allowed to investigate, they were obstructed every step of the way by DOJ higher-ups. “[W]hatever the motivations, at every stage decisions were made that had the effect of benefiting the subject of the investigation,” said Shapley.
Shapley’s testimony reveals the DOJ not only interfered in the 2020 election when it encouraged Big Tech to censor the knowingly-legitimate Hunter Biden laptop story, but they also interfered by thwarting investigations, preventing agents from making any inquiries into “the big guy,” and shielding the Bidens from the consequences of their criminal activity.
