WASHINGTON – Senior Justice Department officials’ contacts with lawyers for Hunter Biden and IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley indicate that DOJ headquarters – not Delaware US Attorney David Weiss – is controlling the federal investigation into the eldest son, Shapley’s legal team said Wednesday.
Shapley’s attorneys disclosed their relationship with deputy associate attorney general Bradley Weinsheimer after his role as a conduit for Hunter Biden’s legal team in the final stages of the tax fraud investigation by Weiss’ office was noted in a recent report.
The revelations come as House Republicans move closer to launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s alleged role in his son’s foreign business deals and what whistleblowers allege was a cover-up in the Hunter Biden criminal investigation that ended with a plea deal only in a dramatic trial. rejected by a federal judge last month.
Weinsheimer, a deputy to Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, spoke by phone with Shapley’s attorney, Mark Lytle, on April 25 and said he wanted to understand his claims against other department officials, which Shapley mentioned a week earlier in a letter to Congress, according to Lytle.
In that conversation, Lytle asked Weinsheimer for a written assurance that Shapley could pass on legally protected sensitive information about an ongoing tax fraud investigation to ensure that he was not breaking any laws while blowing the whistle, but never heard back.
Senior Justice Department officials’ contacts with lawyers for Hunter Biden and IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley show that DOJ headquarters is controlling the federal investigation into the first child.REUTERS
A day later, on April 26, Weinsheimer met with Hunter Biden’s attorneys, Chris Clark and Weiss, who are said to be in charge of the case, according to a report by Politico.
Clark had asked in an email to set up a meeting with someone “to hear our client’s appeal, should the US Attorney’s Office decide to prosecute Mr. Biden.”
“After our client offered whistleblower testimony to Congress, Lisa Monaco’s right-hand man, Bradley Weinsheimer, scheduled a meeting with Mr. Biden’s defense attorney to plead over Mr. Weiss’s head in a manner that completely contradicts the narrative that David Weiss acted independently,” Lytle told The Post Wednesday afternoon.
“The Deputy Attorney General’s office later claimed to us that it was genuinely interested in addressing the whistleblower’s allegations, without disclosing its meeting with Hunter Biden’s attorney. We now know that shortly after that meeting with Weiss’ assistant [Lesley Wolf] offered to drop the case without a plea of guilty at all the same day the DOJ removed our client and his entire IRS team from the case.”
Shapley’s lawyers disclosed their relationship with deputy associate attorney general Bradley Weinsheimer after his role as a conduit for Hunter Biden’s legal team in the final stages of the tax fraud investigation by Weiss’ office was noted in a recent report.CNP/startraksphoto.com
Although Weinsheimer professed interest in Shapley’s alleged cover-up in the case, the team of longtime IRS agents said they were surprised by his apparent lack of interest during a May 16 follow-up call with Lytle and other representatives for Shapley.
The call came a day after a 13-person IRS investigative team was cleared of the Hunter Biden investigation, which was charged at the behest of the DOJ.
“When we followed up with the Deputy Attorney General’s Office on May 16 about this apparent retaliation, Mr. Weinsheimer’s tone changed dramatically from claiming to be interested in whistleblower disclosures to not wanting to be involved at all and referring us to Mr. Weiss,” Lytle said. .
The change in tone and failure to follow up with written assurances that Shapley’s disclosures to him would be legally valid prompted the whistleblower team to question the reason for Weinsheimer’s original outreach and whether it was a sincere attempt to understand and correct alleged misconduct, or fact-finding. mission for other purposes.
The disclosure was made as members of the House of Representatives were on the verge of launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s alleged role in his son’s foreign business deals.Getty Images
The Justice Department and Weiss’ office did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Attorney General Merrick Garland testified twice under oath to Congress that Weiss was able to independently bring charges against Hunter Biden outside of Delaware — a claim later disputed by Shapley and a subordinate, IRS agent Joseph Ziegler, who said that Biden appointed the US attorney in Los Angeles and Washington blocked tax fraud charges.
Garland elevated Weiss to special counsel on Aug. 11 in what Republicans say is also evidence that he originally lacked the authority to bring charges.
Garland previously told Congress under oath that Weiss had “full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he felt it was necessary.”
Whistleblowers allege a cover-up in the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden that ended with a plea deal only in a trial that was abruptly rejected by a federal judge last month.AP
At the Oct. 7 meeting. 2022, Weiss allegedly told Shapley and the group that he did not actually have the power.
Weiss and Garland have publicly denied Shapley’s account, although emails from another IRS official, Special Agent in Charge Darrell Waldon, confirmed the accuracy of his email notes from the meeting.
The House Judiciary Committee last Monday issued subpoenas to the four accused witnesses.
Shapley and Ziegler said that Weiss’ office indicated that it sought to bring federal charges against Hunter Biden in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, but was blocked by his father’s appointed US attorney. confirmed that Weiss did not have the powers that Garland told Congress under oath that he had.
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The whistleblower also said prosecutors in Weiss’ office blocked them from investigating President Biden’s alleged role in his son’s foreign affairs, despite communications directly implicating the president, such as a threatening July 30, 2017, WhatsApp message Shapley gave to Congress in which Hunter Biden wrote to a Chinese government-linked business associate that he was “sitting here with my father” and warned of consequences if the deal was scrapped.
Within 10 days of the text message, $5.1 million flowed from China Energy’s CEFC to a bank account linked to Biden.
As part of the joint venture, Joe Biden, described as a “big man,” was given a 10% cut of the deal with CEFC, according to a May 2017 email retrieved from Hunter’s laptop.
Shapley, backed by testimony from a recently retired FBI agent who worked on the case, accused Weiss’ office of giving Hunter Biden’s legal team advance knowledge of a planned interview attempt in December 2020, blocking the plan after the office also allegedly denounced it. it’s up to Hunter’s attorney about the plan to locate the northern Virginia storage unit.
Tax agents said that Weiss’ office did not give them full access to files from Hunter’s abandoned laptop, blocked them from interviewing other members of the Biden family and vetoed the denial of a search warrant for a guest house at Joe Biden’s home.
Shapley said that prosecutors in Delaware also failed to inform the IRS team that a paid FBI informant provided information that Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of natural gas company Burisma Holdings — which paid Hunter up to $1 million a year starting in 2014 — said in 2016 that he was “coerced” into paying bribes. $10 million to Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for the then-vice president’s help in firing a prosecutor.
Hunter’s former business partner Devon Archer told the House Oversight Committee on July 31 that Joe Biden dined at least twice with his son’s associates from Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan, had coffee with his son’s Chinese partner in a government-backed investment fund and was positioned as lecturer. telephone by Hunter during about 20 business meetings.
Critics of Weiss’ appointment point to reports that he worked with Hunter’s late brother Beau and that his office is full of prosecutors with ties to the Biden family — and note that Justice Department special counsel rules call for appointees to be chosen from outside the department to ensure their independence.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
