A key prosecutor overseeing the investigation of first son Hunter Biden ignored requests for a briefing on vital evidence — including bribery allegations involving President Biden and his offspring, according to new IRS whistleblower documents released Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee.
Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) told reporters Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler had furnished the panel with more than 700 pages of additional messages, emails and documents about their five-year-long investigation of Hunter, now 53.
The evidence dump came hours before the House Oversight Committee will hold its first public hearing in the impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden, which was ordered Sept. 12 by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
The disclosures included a Sept. 20 statement from Shapley in which he said Assistant Delaware US Attorney Lesley Wolf turned down repeated offers for a briefing from the US Attorney’s Office in Pittsburgh.
First son Hunter Biden apparently referred to his father as “my family’s only asset” while discussing his overseas business ventures in June 2017. Teresa KroegerThat office had been tasked in January 2020 by then-AG Bill Barr to examine evidence passed along by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani — including statements to an FBI source by Burisma Holdings owner Mykola Zlochevsky that he had paid $5 million each to Hunter and Joe Biden to secure the dismissal in 2016 of Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
“AUSA Wolf’s comments made clear she did not want to cooperate with the Pittsburgh USAO and that she had already concluded no information from that office could be credible, stating her belief that it all came from Rudy Giuliani,” said Shapley, who added that on Oct. 22, 2020, Wolf told other members of the investigative team she had finally been ordered to take a briefing on the claims the following day.
“[W]e were never informed what information the Pittsburgh USAO provided in the October 23, 2020 briefing,” Shapley added. “We were also not informed whether AUSA Wolf briefed US Attorney [David] Weiss on the information received.”
A source familiar with the investigation told The Post in June that Giuliani was not the origin of the allegation regarding the $5 million payments and that the Pittsburgh US Attorney’s Office found that it and other claims about the Bidens were “credible” and not “disinformation.”
Here’s what the Biden family business scandal impeachment inquiry would look like
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry Tuesday into President Biden — turbocharging congressional power to acquire documents and testimony about Biden’s role in his family’s foreign business dealings while he was vice president.
House Republicans already have issued an array of demands to executive branch agencies relating to Joe Biden’s involvement with first son Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden’s international dealings — in many cases setting September deadlines that could soon escalate into litigation.
The inquiry aims to answer a number of questions:
What’s in Joe Biden’s vice presidential emails?
While vice president, Joe Biden used the pseudonyms “Robert L. Peters” and “Robin Ware” to communicate with staff members — leaving a paper trail of nearly 5,400 written records.
The House Oversight Committee demanded those communications from the National Archives with an Aug. 31 deadline, but a source tells The Post the agency did not comply.
What do Hunter Biden’s bank records show?
Congressional Republicans are preparing to issue subpoenas to banks for accounts held by Hunter and James Biden — after previously subpoenaing some of the associates’ bank statements.
The records could show whether any money was transferred to Joe Biden from his relatives’ foreign income streams and also whether they covered a substantial portion of his expenses. It’s possible the House will later seek the president’s bank records too.
The following month, Shapley testified to Congress that investigators did not receive the FBI informant file detailing the bribery allegation, saying: “Information like this would have been really helpful to have.”
If confirmed, Shapley’s statement is yet another example of Wolf meddling in the probe and directing it away from Joe Biden.
Shapley and Ziegler went to the Ways and Means Committee this past spring with claims that the Justice Department had interfered in the investigation of the first son, who is scheduled to appear in Delaware federal court Oct. 3 to answer to gun charges — but has so far avoided further indictments initially sought by IRS tax investigators, including for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
“The growing body of evidence further calls into question the Justice Department’s attempted sweetheart plea deal for Hunter Biden, and the reasons for appointing the architect of that plea deal as the special counsel for Hunter Biden’s case, in light of officials’ efforts to protect President Biden and his son,” Smith said.
In one email released Wednesday, Wolf told a group of investigators — including Ziegler — that then-presidential candidate Joe Biden was outside the “scope” of their probe and “[t]here should be nothing” about him included.
Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler had furnished the panel with more than 700 pages of additional messages, emails and documents about their five-year probe of Hunter. REUTERS“Please focus on FARA evidence only,” Wolf wrote in her Aug. 7, 2020, response to a draft search warrant — approximately three months before the 2020 presidential election.
In handwritten notes from a meeting held Jan. 12, 2022, Shapley also recorded that Wolf said she was not “personally” interested in following up on a May 2021 report compiled by tax investigators that detailed potential “campaign finance criminal violations” related to Hunter’s “sugar brother” attorney Kevin Morris, who had helped the first son pay off more than $2 million in tax liabilities.
In another email, a CNN producer told IRS investigators in September 2021 that he received an email from Hunter Biden in which the first son said he had expected all his troubles to “go away” once his father became president.
“This file makes it abundantly clear that IRS investigators were concerned there was in fact a connection between Hunter Biden’s global influence peddling Joe Biden and official US government activity,” Smith told reporters.
In another email, a CNN producer told IRS investigators in September 2021 that he received an email from Hunter Biden in which the first son said he had expected all his troubles to vanish once his father became president. REUTERSStill another disclosure shows Democratic lobbying firm Blue Star Strategies gave then-Vice President Biden talking points ahead of a December 2015 meeting with Ukrainian officials.
The lobbying firm had informed Burisma executives in a proposal that as part of its services it would “educate key officials in Washington, DC, followed by a trip to Kiev proposed for mid-December 2015.”
Blue Star Strategies also said it would “promote” the “closure” of Shokin’s investigation into Burisma.
Pozharskyi in a November 2015 email thread to Hunter Biden and Devon Archer expressed concern that the proposal did not “offer any names of top US officials here in Ukraine,” such as the US ambassador, as “targets for improving Nikolay’s case,” referring to Zlochevsky.
“If, however, this is done deliberatly [sic] to be on the safe and cautious side, I can understand the rationale,” Pozharskyi added.
He went on to say that the influence of “high-ranking US officials in Ukraine (US Ambassador) and in US” and a visit from American policymakers would send a “signal” of support for Burisma in order “to close down … pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine.”
Schwerin followed up by confirming that the failure to mention names was “definitely done deliberately to be on the safe and cautious side.”
Archer further told Hunter Biden that he needed to “deliver” Pozharskyi’s message to Blue Star about the proposal, which the then-second son confirmed in a follow-up phone call before asking the Burisma owner to retain the lobbying firm.
With the contract agreed upon, Blue Star held a December 2015 conference call days before then-Vice President Biden’s planned trip to Kyiv, in which he told the lobbyists he was prepared to ask for “serious reforms” of the prosecutor’s office.
Biden later boasted in 2018 that he pressed Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko to oust Shokin in exchange for $1 billion in US loan guarantees during that visit. Shokin was dismissed the following March by a vote of Ukraine’s parliament.
