What is going on with the Hunter Biden whistleblower?: There are claims and counter-claims about what exactly happened in the Justice Department during the investigation of the president’s son, with a whistleblower stating that the U.S. attorney in charge of the case slow-walked it. The attorney general has denied this, however.
Hunter Biden In More Trouble?
The latest phase of the Hunter Biden scandal entails competing narratives about what happened when he was being investigated.
Last week, the president’s son reached a deal with prosecutors, in which he agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanors in relation to non-payment of his taxes, while also having a charge against him for a weapons violation suspended, pending his participation in a diversionary program.
This led to anger from those who have made the travails of Hunter Biden the primary focus of their political work during his father’s presidency.
In recent days, the GOP has been seizing on a whistleblower complaint by veteran IRS employee Gary Shapley, who had overseen the IRS’ role in the Hunter Biden investigation.
“We have to make sure as a special agent for IRS Criminal Investigation that we treat every single person exactly the same,” Shapley said in an interview this week with CBS News. “And that just simply didn’t happen here.”
“Based on my experience, if this was a small business owner or any other non-connected individual, they would have been charged with felony counts,” he added.
Shapley says that he and other people were told by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, the Trump appointee who oversaw the Hunter Biden investigation, was rebuffed in requests to bring charges in jurisdictions besides Delaware, and that Weiss had his request to be named a special counsel rejected. Shapley said he was told this in a meeting last October.
Shapley also stated, according to CBS, that “a senior prosecutor working for Weiss” discouraged him from pursuing leads connected to President Biden, including the line in one email referencing “10 held by H for the big guy.” The author of that email, James Gilliar, has said President Biden was not involved in any deal, and the “10 held” was in reference to a business deal that never actually was consummated.
Weiss, per CBS, wrote in the deal memo that he had “ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges.” And Attorney General Merrick Garland told the press last week that Weiss would have been “permitted 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.” Weiss has not spoken publicly since the day of the decision.
In a media meta-story related to all of this, Fox News this week wrote that “NYT confirms IRS whistleblower claim about Hunter Biden probe, buries in 21st paragraph of report.”
“But in mid-2022, Mr. Weiss reached out to the top federal prosecutor in Washington, Matthew Graves, to ask his office to pursue charges and was rebuffed, according to Mr. Shapley’s testimony,” The Times wrote Tuesday, according to Fox, in a story with the headline “Competing Accounts of Justice Dept.’s Handling of Hunter Biden Case.”
“A similar request to prosecutors in the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles, was also rejected, Mr. Shapley testified. A second former I.R.S. official, who has not been identified, told House Republicans the same story. That episode was confirmed independently to The New York Times by a person with knowledge of the situation.”
The Times story was more of an overview of the different claims and added that the dispute doesn’t necessarily mean someone is lying.
“It remains unclear how much of the difference in the accounts reflects possible factors like miscommunication, clashing substantive judgments among agencies over how best to pursue a prosecution, or personal enmity among officials working on a high-pressure, high-profile case,” the Times story said. “Investigators like Mr. Shapley whose job it is to uncover evidence often have different perspectives from prosecutors who have to take into account how to treat defendants fairly and present cases to juries.”
Expertise and Experience: Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
From 19FortyFive
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