Starting in January 2020, IRS criminal supervisory special agent and whistleblower Gary Shapley and his team of agents began investigating Hunter Biden for tax evasion after incriminating material was found on Hunter’s infamous laptop. “I am alleging, with evidence, that DOJ provided preferential treatment, slow-walked the investigation, did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation,” Shapley told the committee.
One such instance of “preferential treatment” occurred before Shapley and his team’s “day of action,” where they were set to conduct 12 important interviews across the county and seek a “consent search of Hunter Biden’s residence” after nearly a year of investigating Hunter. The DOJ had already denied the IRS team a search warrant, despite “probable cause,” so the investigators were relying heavily on the interviews and a potential consent search.
On December 3rd, five days before the team’s planned “day of action,” they met with Delaware United States Attorney David Weiss and Assistant United States Attorney Lesley Wolf for 12 hours. During the meeting, Wolf told the team that she did not want them to ask the interviewees about Hunter’s father or references to “the big guy.” Wolf reportedly stated there was “no specific criminality to that line of questioning.”
At the meeting, the team devised “a plan for the FBI Los Angeles special agent in charge to reach out at 8 a.m. on December 8th to the Secret Service Los Angeles special agent in charge [of Hunter’s security detail] and tell them that we would be coming to the residence to seek an interview with Hunter Biden and that it was part of an official investigation.”