OPINION:
The protection of Hunter Biden is long in time and vast in geography. It stretches over five years, from East Coast to West Coast, and involves various Justice Department lawyers and, at the top, an attorney general who misled Congress.
Now we know why then-Vice President Joe Biden needed a global burner phone financed by Hunter Biden’s businesses when the two were globe-trotting and Hunter was sweeping up cash.
Revealed in Hunter’s abandoned laptop, it’s the sort of device you see pop up on an NBC “Dateline” episode about how a politician covered his tracks while peddling influence.
News of a scheme to protect Hunter Biden came from the extraordinary appearances of two IRS criminal investigators. They bravely decided to alter their comfortable lives by becoming whistleblowers and risk punishment from a town ruled by Democrats.
“So I’m sitting here in front of you right now terrified,” testified anonymous “Agent 2.” “In coming forward, I’m risking my career, my reputation.”
Agent 2 and Gary Shapley sat down for transcribed interviews in May and June with the House Ways and Means Committee staff.
The subsequently released transcripts shocked Washington, which by then had built up Hunter Biden tolerance as his laptop acted like constant livestreaming of a destructive lifestyle: snorted and smoked illegal drugs, porn pictorials, Russian prostitutes, and millions in cash raked in from corrupt foreign nationals in countries visited by his father.
The big splash came from IRS agent Shapley. He read a July 30, 2017, WhatsApp instant message from Hunter to a Chinese investor and Communist Party official.
Hunter threatened Henry Zhao unless cash started to flow. He said his father was in the room and onboard. (Hunter was indeed staying at the Biden home that day, according to a photo metadata analysis by the Washington Free Beacon.)
Ten days later, Hunter received a $5 million wire from Zhao associates.
So now we know the Bidens shake down foreigners for cash.
The more detailed whistleblower storyline is how the Department of Justice ran interference for Hunter.
His evasion of paying taxes on millions in foreign income is the kind of case the IRS could wrap up in months. That’s as fast as it took Attorney General Merrick Garland’s team to indict Republican Rep. George Santos.
Oh, wait, he’s a Republican. They get indicted faster. Just ask former President Donald Trump, whom President Biden on Nov. 9 promised to destroy as a candidate.
The IRS opened its investigation of Hunter Biden in 2018. He just recently agreed to a sweetheart deal with Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss. Two tax misdemeanors for years 2017-18 and a gun felony under “pre-trial diversion” that will see it eventually dismissed.
Republicans complained, but at least the public now knows the president’s son is a tax cheat.
Between 2018 and 2023, you would not believe the acrobatics that Biden-friendly DOJ bureaucracy went through to try to kill the case. Mr. Garland assured Congress, on his word, Scout’s honor, that no one at Justice was interfering with the Trump holdover Weiss.
As Mr. Shapley tells the story, his criminal division team was ready to start executing search warrants and conducting interviews. But once Joe Biden became the expected presidential nominee, everything stopped. William Barr, Mr. Trump’s attorney general who has turned into Mr. Trump’s enemy, had sent the case to Delaware — never made a peep.
The IRS wanted to search the guesthouse from which Hunter sent the WhatsApp message. Lesley Wolf, Mr. Weiss’ assistant U.S. attorney, balked.
Agents wanted to see if Hunter would comply in turning over documents, including contents of a storage locker for his Washington law firm, Owasco. If not, they would conduct a search. But Ms. Wolf tipped off his lawyers, scuttling the strategy.
The IRS wanted to ask questions about the “big guy” [Hunter’s dad] in emails that promised him a 10% stake. Again, Ms. Wolf said no.
Agent 2 said he told Ms. Wolf: “This is making it difficult for me to do my job. I don’t understand why DOJ Tax senior management is needing to approve every simple document.”
Mr. Shapley said, “It was apparent that DOJ was purposely slow-walking investigative actions in this matter.”
By 2022, the whistleblowers said, it seemed that everyone had finally signed off on charging Hunter with six years of tax fraud from 2014 to 2019. The evidence coursed through Mr. Shapley’s thick, circulated report on code-name “Sportsman.”
But a new problem arose. Two U.S. attorneys appointed by President Biden refused to prosecute cases where Hunter lived at the time — D.C. and California. Two political appointees did not want their Democratic resumes sullied by prosecuting the president’s son.
U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matthew A. Graves will prosecute an old person for walking through an open door to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
But for basic crimes, he acts like a George Soros-funded district attorney. Hunter’s calculated tax fraud on foreign money laundered through various LLCs? Mr. Graves read the IRS report and refused.
Mr. Graves is a Democratic donor, Federal Election Commission filings show. In 2020, he donated $1,500 to then-candidate Biden. The year before, he backed Kamala Harris with $700.
At that time, he listed his employer as the National Women’s Law Center, where his wife, ultra-liberal Fatima Goss Graves, is CEO. People affiliated with the center gave $24,000 to candidates and groups in 2020. None to Republicans.
The center is now waging an online campaign against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas because he took trips with a rich friend.
Mr. Garland, the guy trying to put Mr. Trump away for life, blatantly misled Congress.
“I promised to leave the matter of Hunter Biden in the hands of the U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware. … If he needs to bring it in another jurisdiction, he will have full authority to do that,” he said.
Mr. Shapley said Mr. Weiss informed him the Justice Department turned down Mr. Weiss’ request to be named a special counsel so he himself could bring charges in D.C.
“That’s when the statements of Attorney General Garland became apparent that they were not accurate,” Mr. Shapley said.
In April, IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel promised Congress there would be no retaliation against Hunter whistleblowers.
The next month, the IRS took Mr. Shapley’s entire team off the Biden case — at the request of Mr. Garland’s Department of Justice.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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