Hunter Biden prosecutor told six witnesses he couldn’t charge outside Delaware: IRS whistleblower
The federal prosecutor tasked with investigating Hunter Biden told at least six witnesses last year that he lacked authority to charge the first son outside Delaware and was denied special counsel status, according to an IRS whistleblower — and now the House Judiciary Committee wants to talk to them.
Delaware US Attorney David Weiss made the shocking disclosure at an Oct. 7, 2022, meeting with top IRS and FBI officials — contradicting sworn testimony from Attorney General Merrick Garland, IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley told the House Ways and Means Committee last month.
“He surprised us by telling us on the charges, ‘I’m not the deciding official on whether charges are filed,’” Shapley recounted in his May 26 testimony, which the committee released Thursday.
“He then shocked us with the earth-shattering news that the Biden-appointed DC US Attorney Matthew Graves would not allow him to charge in his district,” added Shapley, who said Graves’ refusal to prosecute meant that Hunter, now 53, would not face tax charges related to “foreign income from Burisma [Holdings] and a scheme to evade his income taxes through a partnership with a convicted felon” in 2014 and 2015.
“The purposeful exclusion of the 2014 and 2015 years sanitized the most substantive criminal conduct and concealed material facts,” Shapley went on.
Shapley’s legal team identified four of the six witnesses in the meeting as Baltimore FBI Special Agent in Charge Tom Sobocinski and Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ryeshia Holley, as well as Shapley and his boss, IRS Special Agent in Charge Darrell Waldon.
The IRS whistleblower also named Shawn Weede and Shannon Hanson, who work in Weiss’ office as a criminal chief prosecutor and assistant prosecutor, respectively, as attendees during his testimony.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Sunday that Republicans will launch an impeachment inquiry into Garland if Shapley’s account is corroborated.
The Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), is expected to call forward each of the alleged witnesses as it manages the fallout of the perjury allegation against Garland — including possible impeachment.
None of the purported meeting attendees responded to The Post’s requests for comment.
The FBI referred inquiries for Sobocinski and Holley to Weiss’ office — even though the US attorney’s comments are specifically at issue.
In the same Oct. 7, 2022, meeting, Shapley recalled, Weiss said he had “subsequently asked for special counsel authority from Main DOJ at that time and was denied that authority. Instead, he was told to follow the process, which was known to send US Attorney Weiss through another President Biden-appointed US Attorney.”
In an internal IRS email memorializing the Oct. 7 meeting and made public with Shapley’s testimony, the whistleblower wrote that Weiss’ disclosure that he was “not the deciding person” was “a huge problem — inconsistent with DOJ public position and Merrick Garland testimony.”
The following Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022, Waldon appeared to confirm Shapley’s read on the proceedings, responding: “Thanks, Gary. You covered it all.”
Garland has noted repeatedly that Weiss, recommended to his?position by Delaware’s two Democratic senators — both of whom are close Biden allies — was appointed by former President Donald Trump.
The attorney general said Friday that Weiss was allowed “to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to.”
McCarthy, meanwhile, said the disparities between the Justice Department’s statements and Shapley’s testimony need to be reconciled.
“US Attorney David Weiss must provide answers to the House Judiciary Committee,” McCarthy tweeted Sunday. “If the whistleblowers’ allegations are true, this will be a significant part of a larger impeachment inquiry into Merrick Garland’s weaponization of DOJ.”
On Monday, the White House attempted to brush off what it called McCarthy’s “unfortunate” impeachment threat against Garland, which would be the first such proceedings aimed at an attorney general in a century.
“This is not the main priority of American families,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at her regular briefing Monday.
Shapley’s account of Biden-appointed US attorneys in DC and Southern California shielding the first son from serious criminal charges, resulting last week in the announcement of a misdemeanor plea deal in Delaware, was backed up in testimony to the same House panel by a publicly unidentified IRS case agent assigned to the Hunter Biden investigation since 2018.
“I was not afforded an opportunity to present to DC on the merits of the case, what we had found through our investigation for 2014, 2015,” the second whistleblower said during his June 1 deposition before the Ways and Means Committee. “I was not afforded the opportunity to present to the Los Angeles US Attorney or the US Attorney’s Office with the evidence that we had found in this case. That was not given me the opportunity. So that right there alone, I think, is improper on its face. The people that know the case the best, the case agents that work the case, should be the ones that present on the material.”
Hunter Biden is scheduled to appear in federal court July 26 as part of a probation-only plea deal he reached with Weiss’ office following a five-year investigation into potential tax and gun crimes.
The deal still must be approved by a judge.
The first son was spotted at a state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday evening — which Garland also attended — and later accompanied his father to Camp David on a weekend trip.
