An Internal Revenue Service whistleblower said Wednesday that he double-checked with the federal prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden to make sure that he could not charge the troubled first son outside his home state of Delaware.
IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley, who first made the stunning disclosures to the House Ways and Means Committee last month, told Fox News’ “Special Report” that First State US Attorney David Weiss repeatedly said behind closed doors that he lacked power to charge potential financial crimes — despite publicly claiming he had been “granted ultimate authority over the matter.”
“I even had him repeat that because I knew how important that fact was, and I wanted to make sure I understood,” Shapley told anchor Bret Baier of an Oct. 7, 2022, meeting with Weiss held with at least five others in attendance.
Shapley added that it was “crystal clear” what the federal prosecutor meant and he “documented it” in an email memo that his supervisor apparently confirmed days later, according to an internal IRS message handed over to Congress.
The whistleblower also said prosecutors barred his team from executing search warrants on Hunter Biden in the months before the 2020 election, repeating an allegation from his congressional testimony.
“Between April and June of 2020, we drafted an affidavit to execute a search warrant in a couple of different locations, and the prosecutors at the time stated that probable cause had been achieved,” Shapley told Baier. “But as we moved closer to the election, it just seemed like they kept putting it on the back burner and they eventually didn’t allow us to do that search warrant, even though the legal requirements to execute that search warrant were met.”
Another IRS whistleblower — identified by his attorney as “Mr. X” — corroborated Shapley’s claims in separate testimony to Ways and Means earlier this month, saying the Justice Department paused all activities in September 2020.
Weiss’ private remarks contradict a June 7 letter he sent to the House Judiciary Committee, in which he said: “I have been granted ultimate authority over the matter including responsibility for deciding where, when and whether to file charges.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland has maintained in sworn congressional testimony that Weiss had “full authority” to charge the first son and repeated Friday that the US attorney was able “to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to.”
Shapley, in his May 26 deposition, said Weiss had tried to charge Hunter Biden in the Central District of California and in Washington, DC, but was denied by US attorneys Martin Estrada and Matthew Graves. Both were appointed by President Biden.
The Justice Department also denied Weiss special-counsel status twice during the case, according to Shapley and the other IRS agent.
The attorney general said last week he never saw that request, and has often noted that Weiss was appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2019 and kept in place after Biden assumed office in 2021. Delaware Democratic senators Chris Coons and Tom Carper recommended Weiss for the position.
Shapley also told CBS News Tuesday night that IRS investigators were barred from taking necessary steps that may have incriminated the president.
The crimes Hunter allegedly committed would have landed “any other person” in prison, the whistleblower told CBS reporter Jim Axelrod, including “personal expenses that were taken as business expenses, prostitutes, sex club memberships, hotel rooms for purported drug dealers.”
Between 2014 and 2019, Shapley said, he his team found Hunter owed $2.2 million in unpaid taxes.
Last week, Hunter Biden entered into a probation-only plea deal with his father’s Justice Department for tax misdemeanors and agreed to a diversion program for a federal firearms charge.