WASHINGTON – A senior Justice Department official’s contact with lawyers for Hunter Biden and IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley shows that Justice Department headquarters, not Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, controlled the federal investigation of the first child, Shapley’s legal team said Wednesday.
Shapley’s lawyers revealed his contacts with Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer after a recent report highlighted his role as a conduit for Hunter Biden’s legal team in the final stretch of the U.S. tax fraud investigation. Weiss.
The revelation comes as House Republicans move closer to launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s alleged role in his son’s foreign business dealings and what whistleblowers allege was a cover-up in the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden who ended up in a probation plea deal that was dramatically rejected by a federal judge last month.
Weinsheimer, a deputy of Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco, spoke by phone with Shapley’s attorney, Mark Lytle, on April 25 and said he wanted to understand his claims against other department officials, which Shapley alluded to a week earlier in a letter to Congress. according to Lytle.
In the conversation, Lytle asked Weinsheimer for written assurances that Shapley could pass on legally protected confidential information about the ongoing tax fraud investigation to ensure he was not breaking any laws by reporting, but never received a response.
Contact by a senior Justice Department official with lawyers for Hunter Biden and IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley shows that Justice Department headquarters controlled the federal investigation of the first child.REUTERS
A day later, on April 26, Weinsheimer met with Hunter Biden’s attorney, Chris Clark, and Weiss, who was reportedly handling the case, according to a Politico report.
Clark had requested in an email to meet with someone “to hear our client’s appeal, should the US Attorney’s Office decide to charge Mr. Biden.”
“After our client offered testimony before Congress, Lisa Monaco’s right-hand man, Bradley Weinsheimer, scheduled a meeting with Mr. Biden’s defense attorney to appeal over Mr. Weiss in a way that he strongly disagreed with. with the narrative that David Weiss was acting independently,” Lytle told The Post on Wednesday night.
“The Deputy Attorney General’s office later affirmed to us that it was genuinely interested in addressing the whistleblower’s allegations, without disclosing its meeting with Hunter Biden’s attorneys. We now know that shortly after that meeting, Weiss’s assistant [Lesley Wolf] “He offered to end the case without any plea on the same day the Department of Justice removed our client and his entire IRS team from the case.”
Shapley’s lawyers disclosed his contacts with Assistant Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer after a recent report pointed to his role as a conduit for Hunter Biden’s legal team in the final stretch of Weiss’s office’s tax fraud investigation. . CNP/startraksphoto.com
Although Weinsheimer professed interest in Shapley’s allegations of a cover-up in the case, the veteran IRS agent’s team says they were surprised by his apparent disinterest during a May 16 follow-up call with Lytle and other Shapley representatives.
That call came a day after the 13-person IRS investigation team was removed from the Hunter Biden investigation, reportedly at the direction of the Justice Department.
“When we followed up with the Deputy Attorney General’s Office on May 16 about this obvious retaliation, Mr. Weinsheimer’s tone had taken a dramatic turn from asserting interest in the whistleblowers’ disclosures to being completely unwilling to engage and refer us. to Mr. Weiss. Lytle said.
The change in tone and the lack of any written assurance that the disclosures Shapley had made to him would be legal led the whistleblower team to question the reason for Weinsheimer’s original communication and whether it was a sincere attempt to understand and rectify the alleged irregularities, or a fact. -Find mission for other purposes.
The revelation comes as House Republicans move closer to launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s alleged role in his son’s overseas business dealings.Getty Images
The Justice Department and Weiss’ office did not immediately respond to the Post’s request for comment.
Attorney General Merrick Garland twice testified under oath before Congress that Weiss was able to independently bring charges against Hunter Biden out of Delaware, a claim later contradicted by Shapley and a subordinate, IRS agent Joseph Ziegler, who said U.S. attorneys Biden appointees in Los Angeles and Washington blocked the tax fraud allegations.
Garland appointed Weiss as special prosecutor on August 11, which Republicans said was also evidence that he originally lacked the authority to bring charges.
Garland had previously told Congress under oath that Weiss had “full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he deems it necessary.”
Whistleblowers allege there was a cover-up in the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden that ended in a probation plea deal that was dramatically rejected by a federal judge last month.
In a meeting on October 7, 2022, Weiss allegedly told Shapley and a group that he did not actually have that authority.
Weiss and Garland have publicly denied Shapley’s account, although an email from another IRS official, Special Agent in Charge Darrell Waldon, affirmed the accuracy of the emailed notes of the meeting.
Last Monday, the House Judiciary Committee issued subpoenas to four alleged witnesses.
Shapley and Ziegler said Weiss’ office indicated he attempted to file federal charges against Hunter Biden in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., but was blocked by U.S. attorneys appointed by his father. confirming that Weiss lacked the power that Garland told Congress under oath that he had.
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The whistleblowers also said prosecutors in Weiss’s office prevented them from investigating President Biden’s alleged role in his son’s foreign companies, despite communications directly implicating the president, such as a threatening WhatsApp message on July 30. of 2017 that Shapley delivered to Congress in which Hunter Biden wrote to a business associate with ties to the Chinese government who was “sitting here with my father” and warned him of the consequences if a deal was cancelled.
Ten days after that text message, $5.1 million flowed from CEFC China Energy to bank accounts linked to Biden.
As part of the same venture, Joe Biden, described as the “big guy,” received a 10% cut from the CEFC deal, according to a May 2017 email recovered from Hunter’s laptop.
Shapley, backed by testimony from a recently retired FBI agent who worked on the case, accused Weiss’s office of giving Hunter Biden’s legal team advance knowledge of a planned interview attempt in December 2020, botching the plan afterward. that the office supposedly also gave a face. to Hunter’s attorneys about plans to search a storage unit in northern Virginia.
Prosecutors said Weiss’s office did not give them full access to files on Hunter’s abandoned laptop, prevented them from interviewing other members of the Biden family and vetoed the rejection of a search warrant for a guest house in Joe Biden’s house.
Shapley said Delaware prosecutors also failed to inform the IRS team that a paid FBI informant provided a tip that Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of the natural gas company Burisma Holdings, which paid Hunter up to $1 million a year starting 2014, he said in In 2016, he was “forced” to pay $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for the then-vice president’s help in getting a prosecutor fired.
Hunter’s former business partner Devon Archer told the House Oversight Committee on July 31 that Joe Biden had dinner at least twice with his son’s Ukrainian, Russian and Kazakh associates, had coffee with the Chinese partner of his son into a state-backed investment fund and was named speaker. phone by Hunter during about 20 business meetings.
Critics of Weiss’ appointment point to reports that he worked with Hunter’s late brother, Beau, and that his office is filled with prosecutors with ties to the Bidens, and point out that Justice Department special counsel regulations require that Designated persons are selected from outside the department to ensure their independence.
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