Hunter Biden case: Special counsel Weiss played a key role in sidelining IRS whistleblower

Special counsel David Weiss forced the IRS to take a top agent off the Hunter Biden tax fraud investigation after he told Mr. Weiss that the case was being mishandled, according to the agent and the agent’s supervisor.

Gary Shapley, the IRS whistleblower who disclosed evidence of alleged political interference by the Justice Department to protect Hunter Biden from tax fraud charges, said Mr. Weiss first sought to push him off the case after a contentious meeting on Oct. 7, 2022.

Mr. Shapley, a special agent for the IRS Criminal Investigation, eventually went to Congress seeking whistleblower protections to disclose his complaints about the handling of the case.

On Monday, Hunter Biden filed a lawsuit against the IRS, accusing the agency of “repeatedly and intentionally” disclosing his tax returns and failing to protect the confidentiality of his tax documents.

Mr. Shapley’s fallout with Mr. Weiss started at the Oct. 7 meeting, where he expressed concerns about “updates and communications” in the tax fraud case. The case had been open for years with no charges imminent for the president’s son despite evidence of hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes.

The meeting with Mr. Weiss, Mr. Shapley later told Congress, was “surprisingly contentious” and “ended quite awkwardly.”

SEE ALSO: Hunter Biden sues IRS, alleging agents illegally disclosed his tax information

After the meeting, Mr. Shapley’s legal team told The Washington Times, Mr. Weiss, then the U.S. district attorney for Delaware, began reviewing “protected disclosures” that Mr. Shapley had been filing to his supervisor about the Hunter Biden IRS investigation dating back to 2020. The disclosures documented the ways Mr. Shapley believed the investigation was being slow-walked and mishandled.

“Gary raised concerns in the Oct. 7, 2022, meeting. Weiss realized that and started looking into Gary’s communications, and he realized he made protected disclosures,” said Mr. Shapley’s attorney Tristan Leavitt.

Soon afterward, Mr. Weiss “pushed to get Gary off the case, even though Gary’s supervisors say Gary committed no misconduct,” Mr. Leavitt said.

Mr. Shapley’s attorneys are highlighting the timeline that led to his removal from the case amid new leaked congressional testimony disclosed by House Democrats eager to invalidate Mr. Shapley’s claims of political interference in the Hunter Biden tax investigation.

Some of the testimony contradicts Mr. Shapley’s recollections of the Oct. 7 meeting, including his notes from the meeting that memorialize Mr. Weiss telling the IRS and FBI officials in the room that “he is not the deciding person” on charging Hunter Biden. The statement contradicted congressional testimony from Attorney General Merrick Garland, who said Mr. Weiss was “in charge” of the investigation and there would be no interference from him.

A trio of FBI and IRS agents told lawmakers in closed-door testimony they do not recall Mr. Weiss stating he was “not the deciding person” and said they did not believe political bias was influencing the case.

Mr. Shapley’s attorneys said the testimony shows that Mr. Weiss pushed Mr. Shapley off the Hunter Biden investigation after Mr. Shapley complained to his supervisor about the handling of the case.

Mr. Shapley’s supervisor, Darrell J. Waldon, confirmed to House investigators that Mr. Shapley and Mr. Weiss clashed at the Oct. 7 meeting. After the meeting, Mr. Waldon said, Mr. Weiss told him that he would no longer be talking to Mr. Shapley, the point person for the Justice Department in the Hunter Biden investigation until that moment.

“I recall more vividly him stating he was not going to be responding to Mr. Shapley’s emails anymore, and at some point, he said he would be talking to me,” Mr. Waldon said, according to a transcript of the interview obtained by The Washington Times.

Mr. Waldon told investigators that he removed Mr. Shapley from the Hunter Biden investigation “primarily due to what I perceived to be unsubstantiated allegations about motive, intent, bias.”

Later in his testimony, Mr. Waldon explained in greater detail the reason Mr. Shapley was pushed out of the investigation. He testified that Mr. Weiss said he would no longer talk to Mr. Shapley because of a “conflict” over obtaining evidence in the Hunter Biden investigation. 

Mr. Waldon said it gave him no choice but to remove Mr. Shapley, not because of misconduct but because Mr. Weiss’ refusal to talk to Mr. Shapley would hobble their investigation.

“I didn’t think that that would be resolved quickly,” Mr. Waldon said. “And in order to move the investigation forward, I recommended that he be removed so that we could continue to push the investigation forward.”

Mr. Shapley was informally cut out of the investigation in December 2022 and officially taken off the case on May 15.

By then, Mr. Shapley had taken his whistleblower complaint to Congress. He told lawmakers that the Justice Department had blocked his investigative team from pursuing the critical evidence in the case, including financial records belonging to Hunter Biden that were stored on his father’s property and lines of questioning about Mr. Biden’s involvement in his son’s business deals.

News of Mr. Shapley’s then-anonymous whistleblower complaint was leaked to the media on April 19. On April 25, a top Justice Department official called Mr. Shapley’s team to fish for details about the whistleblowers’ claims. The next day, the same official met with Hunter Biden’s then-defense attorney Chris Clark.

Less than one month later, on the day Mr. Shapley was formally removed from the case, Justice Department officials offered a plea deal to Hunter Biden that would spare him any charges or jail time for either the tax fraud or lying on a gun background check form. They changed the deal weeks later, after Mr. Shapley’s CBS interview claiming political interference in the case.

The Justice Department then told Hunter Biden’s legal team that he must plead guilty to the two misdemeanor tax charges and agree to enter a pretrial diversion program on the gun charge.

None of the charges would come with recommended jail time.

The deal crumbled in a July court hearing after Judge Mary Ellen Noreika forced prosecutors to disclose that the deal would provide Hunter Biden with blanket immunity from other charges related to his crimes, including unregistered foreign lobbying.

Mr. Garland elevated Mr. Weiss to special counsel on Aug. 11.

Last week, Mr. Weiss charged Hunter Biden with three criminal counts related to owning a gun while a drug addict and reopened the investigation into Hunter Biden’s failure to pay taxes.

Mr. Weiss did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Times.