WASHINGTON – Federal prosecutors looking into tax fraud allegations against first son Hunter Biden made a point of delaying a charging decision in the case until after last year’s midterm elections to avoid “shooting themselves in the foot,” according to newly released whistleblower documents.
The revelation came from IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley’s typed notes following a Sept. 22, 2022, meeting between investigators and prosecutors, during which the Delaware US Attorney’s Office and the Justice Department’s Tax Division “made the decision not to charge until after the election.”
“They said why should they shoot themselves in the foot by charging before,” Shapley wrote in his notes from that day.
The message was relayed to the investigative team by Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf, Shapley wrote in an affidavit dated Sept. 20, 2023.
“AUSA Wolf revealed prosecutors had decided not to charge the case until after the midterm election so as not to shoot themselves in the foot – even though they were not being directed by Justice Department headquarters to pause overt activity,” he stated in the document.
It is unclear what prosecutors meant by “shoot themselves in the foot.”
The notes were released Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee as part of a 700-page batch of documents, messages and emails from the five-year-long probe of Hunter, now 53.
After the learning of prosecutors’ decision to wait until the elections were completed, Shapley made a series of objections by email and in meetings, according to the documents.
That continued until he and fellow whistleblower IRS Special Agent Joseph Ziegler were abruptly taken off the case this past May “at the request of Delaware USAO and DOJ.”
According to Shapley, other members of the investigative unit, including Baltimore FBI Special Agent in Charge Tom Sobocinski and FBI Assistant Agent in Charge Ryeshia Holley, also raised “major concerns about the delays, decision-making and lack of resolution in this case.”
In a May 15 meeting, Shapely alleged that the prosecutor’s request to replace he and Ziegler “seemed nefarious … since the original team raised contemporaneous unethical conduct by the prosecutors that could simply be brushed over by DOJ with the new team,” according to his notes taken that day.
“[I] stated that [I] had been providing updates to IRS-[Criminal Investigation] leadership since at least June of 2020 that provided specific examples of Delaware USAO and DOJ being unethical, inappropriate and providing preferential treatment to the subject,” Shapley wrote.
“[I] stated that if they simply do what those parties requested without taking into consideration that they are not acting appropriately,” he added, “that IRS-CI would be complicit in the unethical conduct by Delaware USAO and DOJ.”