IRS Whistleblower 2 Puts Congress To The Test — Will The GOP Tolerate Lies Told To Congressional Committees By The Biden Administration?

by SHIPWRECKEDCREW

The second IRS Whistleblower is Gary Shapley. To put the headline in context, Shapley has said in an interview under oath, followed up by a letter from his attorney, that US Attorney for Delaware David Weiss told a group of assembled federal law enforcement officials on October 7, 2022, that he did not have the authority from DOJ to file charges against Hunter Biden outside the District of Delaware. He said he had asked for Special Counsel status from DOJ. Shapley memorialized this meeting in a contemporaneous memorandum to his IRS superiors.

Earlier this year Attorney General Merrick Garland testified before Congress that Weiss had the authority to charge in any district he chose, that Weiss had never asked for Special Counsel authority, and that the direction and outcome of the Hunter Biden investigation was the result of Weiss’s decision-making alone.

Weiss was the “holdover” U.S. Attorney for Delaware who had been appointed by Pres. Trump — but was confirmed by the Senate ONLY with the approval of both Delaware Senators, long-time Biden cronies Tom Carper and Chris Coons.

Shapley was the Supervisory Special Agent who oversaw the Group (not “squad”) that WB1 was a member of. That group is called the “International Tax And Financial Crimes Group.” Shapley himself worked out of a Washington DC office, but many members of the Group worked remotely from IRS offices around the country. The Group members actually applied for the assignment to the ITFC, and their selection was merit-based.

Shapley came into the ITFC as its supervisor after it had already been set up and led by a supervisor before him. He remained as the supervisor of this Group until he was named acting ASAC in the Chicago Field Office in October 2022. Up to that point in his career he had received numerous awards and recognition from IRS and DOJ for his work as a criminal tax investigator and supervisor.

But beginning in October 2022, after WB1 and Shapley had led the aggressive push for the investigation and indictment of Hunter Biden, Shapley has been retaliated against by IRS, including being denied a promotion that he was clearly most qualified for.

He alleges that threats issued after October 2022 from the Washington DC IRS office have suppressed other whistleblowers from coming forward to report what they know. He says the record of inappropraite conduct by attorneys with DOJ Tax Division and the Delaware USAO has been well documented for an extended period of time with the upper management of the IRS, eventually resulting in a demand from DOJ that the ITFC be removed from the HB investigation.

Here are some passages taken directly from the transcript of his comments:

 
The IRS investigation was opened in Nov. 2018, and it turns out that the FBI confirmed the authenticity of HB’s laptop taken from the computer repair shop also in Nov. 2018 by comparing the device identifier with the Apple ID device number in HB’s iCloud account. In other words, the FBI was able to establish that the data in HB’s iCloud account came from the device in its possession meaning HB had linked that computer to his iCloud account. The computer was not something planted in the computer shop as part of a Russian disinformation campaign as later suggested by Biden campaign surrogates in the IC.

Shapley became supervisor of the ITFC group in January 2020 — that’s 14 months after WB1 first opened the investigation so the work was well underway by the time he arrived. The ITFC were hand-picked IRS CI Special Agents. When Shapley took over, the “Direct Investigative Team” was WB1, co-case agent, and Shapley. They had most of the direct contacts about the case with DOJ Tax, Delaware USAO, and the FBI, including at biweekly team meetings of representatives from each.

In March 2020 he sent a “Sensitive Case Report” up his chain of command advising them that by mid-March they would be ready to seek approval to obtain search warrants for locations in California, Arkansas, Washington DC, and New York.

On April 1, 2020, a draft affidavit in support of search warrants was completed, along with a plan to seek interviews of as many as 15 people on the day the warrants were executed.

But Joe Biden became the presumptive Democrat nominee for POTUS in April 2020, and with that development officials in DOJ began to drag their feet on approving investigative steps. By June they were overtly delaying approvals for more than 60 days even though the requests were being made outside the DOJ policy window of not taking actions that might influence elections within 90 days of the election.

In an internal IRS call on June 6 Shapley and WB1 pointed out to IRS senior management that in the normal investigative process they would have already executed search warrants, interviewed possible witnesses, and delivered requests for documents — but all those steps had been slow-walked by DOJ keeping any from taking place. IRS senior management decided to defer to DOJ.

Ultimately the decision by DOJ was to do nothing overt on the investigation until after the Nov. 2020 election.

Between October 2020 and October 2022, Shapley and the most direct interaction with Delaware US Attorney David Weiss and senior officials at DOJ Tax about the investigation.

In August 2020 the IRS team received iCloud messages from HB’s account. These messages reflected relevant and significant communication between HB and others that needed to be followed-up on with interviews. But prosecutors denied suggestions about developing a strategy, and refused to seek location information that might disclose the physical location of the sender when the messages were sent. This includes the now-infamous July 30, 2017 message demanding payment from a Chinese businessman of an amount previously agreed-upon, and threatening to use his father’s influence to adversely impact the reputed partner.

Note: This is only 7 months after Joe Biden left office, and the events of the summer of 2017 are chock-full of influence peddling machinations by Hunter. I’ll preparing another article that involves a detailed timeline of the various endeavors of Hunter Biden to cash-in on his family name beginning around 2009 when Joe Biden became Vice President. This will involve much information about the various business entities that the IRS Whistleblowers avoided discussing since those might involved in other criminal activity beyond the failure to file tax returns.

In a Sept. 3, 2020, meeting, AUSA Leslie Wolf acknowledged there was more than sufficient probable cause to search the location the guest house at Joe Biden’s residence where HB had been living, but that such a warrant “would never get approved.”

Note: Above Shapley said WB1 had prepared the draft affidavit back in early April — this is now 5 months later and the AUSA is saying no warrant for a location with evidence of criminal conduct could get approved. In this same time frame there was great concern being expressed that Special Counsel Durham might move forward with indictments that could impact the upcoming election. The REAL concern, however, was over anything that might happen to create a greater likelihood that Donald Trump might be re-elected. This Sept. 2 meeting took place on a Wednesday. The GOP Convention had ended the previous Thursday, August 27, and Trump was the middle of the typical post-convention bounce. But an AUSA in Joe Biden’s home state is putting the brakes on an investigation because it might hurt Joe Biden just as the nominating conventions ended.

The next piece of information provided by Shapley is incredibly significant because of the subject involved, what was being sought by the IRS, the reasons why it was being sought, and what had happened historically that might be revealed:

 
This is going to be part of my in-depth timeline story. Blue Star Strategies (BSS) is a PR business in Washington DC that is not well enough understood by the public, and likely played a key roll in the issue of the alleged payment of $5-10 million in bribes by the owners of Burisma to the Biden’ while Joe Biden was still Vice-President.

VERY BASIC OVERVIEW: Hunter and Devon Archer are on the Burisma Board starting in April 2014. The owners of BSS are two veterans of the Clinton Administration, and BSS is a PR/crisis management firm. I have seen it reported — but never been able to confirm — that HB was on the Board of BSS in 2015.

It is confirmed in paperwork and email records that HB was the go-between with BSS and Burisma when BSS was hired to do PR work to rehab the image of the Burisma owner who was under investigation in for corruption in Ukraine and the UK. A corporate official of Burisma communicated with Hunter about “deliverables” — what Burisma was going to get from the contract with BSS that involved a monthly retainer — $30,000 if my recollection is correct.

The deal between BSS and Burisma was signed in Nov. 2015. The first week of Dec. 2015 BSS — a private PR firm — was invited to participate in a White House teleconference planning the agenda for …. Joe Biden’s upcoming visit to Ukraine. That is the infamous visit where Joe Biden later bragged about having threatened to block foreign aid to Ukraine unless the prosecutor investigating the Burisma owner was fired. Exactly the kind of “deliverable” that Burisma was hoping it would receive as a result of its contract with BSS — and Hunter Biden’s fingerprints weren’t on it.

All these activities in late 2015 come at a time when Hillary Clinton is considered the heir apparent to Barack Obama for the Presidency. A highly connected PR firm in Washington DC, with historical ties to the Clintons, would be positioning itself to be a big player in an upcoming Clinton Presidency — especially with regard to a newly installed Ukraine government thought to be friendly to the West and hostile to the Putin Government in Russia. This work on behalf of Burisma, with Joe Biden delivering action by the Ukraine government for the benefit of a BSS client, set the firm up for more business in the future.

Fast forward to September 2020 and we find the IRS Group investigating Hunter Biden for tax and financial crimes waiting on a warrant to get emails of BSS. And not just any warrant, but one that must go through “OEO.” He’s told by an AUSA working on his investigation that OEO is delaying the issuance of the warrant — a reference that Shapley didn’t entirely understand.

I can tell you what it meant — “OEO” is the “Office of Enforcement Operations” in DOJ. That is the office that must approve on all Title III wiretap applications before they are submitted to a judge. The process is similar in its complexity to the FISA applications with multiple approvals required before the application can be presented to a judge to issue the warrant.

Was IRS seeking a wiretap on BSS? No — but the rules that apply to wiretaps also apply to getting access to unread email communications less than 180 days old. What IRS was seeking — and what DOJ OEO was stalling — was the IRS investigators gaining access to and reading the very latest email communications of BSS.

These warrants also operate like wiretaps in that they are forward looking. The email service provider would be instructed by the Court Order to send copies of emails communications to the IRS investigators at the same time the emails were sent to or from BSS email accounts. Preesumably the emails relevant to the investigation would have involved Hunter Biden or people associated with Hunter Biden regarding activities that were ongoing.

So in September 2020, the IRS team had probable cause to believe — at that time — that BSS and Hunter Biden were involved in ONGOING criminal activity, and the emails of BSS would include evidence of that criminal activity both retrospectively and on a going-forward basis until the warrant was terminated. Shapley makes specific reference to the stalling by OEO being a problem for the ongoing FARA aspect of the investigation — the Foreign Agent Registration Act. So HB — and likely BSS — were under investigation for being an unregistered agent of a foreign power.

WHERE HAVE WE HEARD THIS BEFORE?????

What was the FBI doing on its side of the investigation at this same time?

Read more (Consider subscribing to Ship, he defends some of the J6 political prisoners and the money goes to their defense fund)