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Gary Shapley Didn’t Tell Congress about Election Meddling Concerns

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I’m reading my way through the documents from Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler that the House Ways and Means Committee released the other day.

While I have yet to read the tax-related documents closely, the others don’t help the evidence-free impeachment much, undoubtedly complicate David Weiss’ hopes of charging Hunter Biden on tax crimes, and probably give Abbe Lowell a stash of documents he would otherwise not have gotten, some of which show investigative sloppiness and potential evidentiary problems for any case Weiss does charge (again, some of which Lowell would otherwise never have gotten).

Plus, some of the documents undermine the Agents’ claims to be whistleblowers. The documents show they had advance notice of both Delaware’s decision to decline prosecution of the 2104 and 2015 tax years and of the timing of any prosecution. They show Shapley walked into a key October 7, 2022 meeting with a chip on his shoulder and an agenda entirely at odds with his knowledge of declination and timing. From that point forward, phantoms of Shapley’s paranoia, not facts, appear to have driven his actions.

For now, though, I want to point to two details that utterly destroy Shapley’s complaints about delays in 2020. It has always been the case that most of Shapley’s complaints about politicization (besides his own) pertained to events that happened under the Trump Administration. Indeed, that’s something that Jason Smith struggled to address at his own presser the other day: how events from 2020 could support the impeachment of Joe Biden.

But details in two documents Shapley sent in late 2020 reveal that during his entire media tour, Shapley has been withholding a key detail that make these complaints all the more ridiculous.

The first is what must be a draft (since it is not dated and includes editorial questions) one page summary of the investigation written for the IRS Deputy Commissioner around November 9, 2020. It explained (as other documents the IRS agents did too) that after the IRS got a Suspicious Activity Report regarding a UK porn site that wasn’t reporting income to US-based contractors, one of whom Hunter Biden had also paid as an escort, the IRS used that to start pulling Hunter’s tax returns, an initial predication that is going to be comedy gold in any opening arguments Abbe Lowell ever gives at a Hunter Biden trial. It also revealed (again, this gets mentioned in other documents) that there was a FARA investigation out of New York regarding Hunter’s ties to CEFC. Finally, the document attributed any pre-election guidance not just to David Weiss’ office, but also to DOJ Tax and the Deputy Attorney General’s office.

To date no proactive interviews have occurred as a result of guidance provided to the investigative team by the USAO in Delaware, DOJ Tax PDAG and the Deputy Attorney General’s office.

We’ve known of the Deputy Attorney General’s involvement since Shapley’s transcript was first released, which described that the guidance involved Richard Donoghue. Shapley has nevertheless blamed Weiss’ office for these delays ordered by Bill Barr’s top deputies, and Smith even blamed Lesley Wolf personally.

But the centrality of the DAG’s office in such delays is important background to a report filed on December 10, 2020 — which shows that its author (it’s not entirely clear who wrote this, but Shapley provided it) was upset that investigators weren’t improperly sharing information with Congress even then — attributes any delays in the investigation to concerns about election interference.

This investigation has been hampered and artificially slowed by various claims of potential election meddling. Even after the election, our day of action to go overt was delayed more than two weeks.

The memo clearly dismisses those claims, which suggests whoever wrote it thinks they know better than FBI counterintelligence investigators. But it also ignores someone else who knows better about known efforts by Russia to use Hunter Biden as a campaign prop: Donoghue. In February 2020, when he was US Attorney for EDNY, Bill Barr ordered him to serve as a gatekeeper for any investigation implicating Ukraine. This was a specific effort to prevent the SDNY investigation into Rudy Giuliani to pursue Rudy’s efforts to fetch dirt, including a laptop!!, from Andrii Derkach in December 2019.

But starting in July, Donoghue swapped places with Seth DuCharme, becoming the Principal Assistant Deputy Attorney General, where he proceeded to issue guidance to delay any overt investigative steps in the Hunter Biden investigation. In other words, the orders to delay overt steps until after the election would have involved someone who knew as well as anyone in government that the effort to exploit Hunter Biden’s relationship with Burisma involved a plot coordinated with known Russian agents.

But over the course of a four month media blitz, Gary Shapley — represented by people close to Chuck Grassley, who of late has been pushing this Russian information operation himself — suppressed the fact that DOJ had concerns, concerns that manifested in multiple Treasury sanctions afterwards, that the effort to focus attention on Burisma was orchestrated by Russia, Ukranian agents of Russia, and Donald Trump’s own efforts to solicit dirt whereever he could.

Twice yesterday, Republicans refused to vote on Democratic requests that James Comer subpoena Rudy (the first request included a request to subpoena Lev Parnas as well). Yet this detail from Shapley — and his suppression of it for four months — makes a Rudy subpoena all the more important.

After Threats Elicited by Gary Shapley’s Misleading Testimony, Hunter Biden Prosecutors Reneged on the Plea Deal

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In the wake of two news reports on the communications leading up to the aborted Hunter Biden plea, Jim Jordan et al demanded the documents shared with the Politico and NYT from Hunter’s lawyers. In response, Lowell sent the following documents, which Betsy Woodruff Swan published here:

While the letters include a familiar catalog of the Shapley and Ziegler media tour, there are a few details worth noting.

First, the August 14 letter goes to great lengths to distinguish the topic of Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler’s purported whistleblowing — prosecutorial misconduct — from the materials released, which focus on investigative material implicating Hunter Biden. That distinction ought be a way for DOJ to rein in the two purported whistleblowers, as Merrick Garland quickly did in the case of Michael Sherwin.

The letter claims, as Abbe Lowell has in the past, that some of the statements Shapley and Ziegler have made are false.

[T]he “facts” disclosed and conclusions reached are either false, legally incorrect, or were otherwise addressed during the various meetings between defense counsel and your Office.

If that’s true, Lowell should ask for a criminal investigation for their false statements before Congress.

It also reveals something that should be obvious but I hadn’t realized: The iCloud warrant which produced a bunch of WhatsApp texts, which Shapley discussed at length in his original testimony, has never been disclosed to Hunter himself, so must be sealed.

On several occasions during their testimony, Mr. Shapley and Mr. Ziegler discussed a sealed search warrant, and showed and discussed with the Committee certain fruits of that sealed search warrant. Because we have never been notified of any such “electronic search warrant for iCloud backup”— nor of any other warrant to search for and seize any property of our client 13—we must presume that Mr. Shapley and Mr. Ziegler were discussing, in violation of a sealing order, a search warrant that has been sealed. Nevertheless, Mr. Shapley purportedly produced WhatsApp messages that are the: fruit of these warrants, and they have now been published.” Moreover, Mr. Ziegler offered to produce to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee additional and more fulsome grand jury materials concerning these messages, with the intent of making such materials public.

So it’s not just that Shapley was violating grand jury secrecy (he was authorized by Ways and Means Chief Counsel to share tax information, but not grand jury information), he was also almost certainly violating a sealing order that remained in effect almost two months after Hunter Biden received a summons in conjunction with the tax charges (conveniently so for the purported whistleblowers, because the warrant affidavit may rely on poisoned fruit from their mistreatment of “the laptop”). Whatever judge authorized that warrant and gag — presumably DE’s Chief Judge, Colm Connolly — might be interested that investigative agents are just blowing off the gag they themselves presumably asked for.

The most alarming thing in the August 14 letter, though, is a claim that Leo Wise — who has taken the lead role in the prosecution — claimed in a July 31 call to be unaware of any grand jury leaks in the investigation, at all!

On a July 31, 2023, call, Assistant United States Attorney Wise stated he was “not aware” of any leak of grand jury information by the Government during the course of the Government’s investigation of our client. Such a statement was surprising given that Mr. Biden’s counsel have discussed such leaks with the Goverment on multiple occasions over the past two years and addressed these leaks in at least four prior letters and countless telephone calls with your Office.

[snip]

Yet, given your Office’s inaction in the face of a torrent of illegal leaks about your investigation of Mr. Biden, and now your reinvented denial that leaks ever happened at all—your Offices assurances are being rendered false.

It’s as if the guy Weiss brought in to salvage the case believes he has to simply deny what everyone watching can plainly see, that Shapely and Ziegler have set off a torrent of prejudicial information that could make it impossible for Hunter to get a fair trial, much less be exonerated if not charged.

In both the August 14 letter and the one from yesterday, Lowell claims that the political pressure Jordan et al have put on Weiss led the newly minted Special Counsel to ratchet up his charges.

The change to a rare misdemeanor failure to file/pay and a felony diversion for possession of a firearm (and now the actual filing of those firearm charges) occurred only after a chain of events starting with the improper disclosures arranged by you and your Committees of the so-called “whistleblowers” claims of prosecutorial misconduct and your, and the right-wing media with whom you coordinate, taking up those claims.

But there’s something that Lowell didn’t mention.

It’s not just political pressure that this media blitz has created.

It’s credible threats of violence.

As Ken Dilanian first reported, after Shapley started representing Lesley Wolf’s adherence to DOJ and FBI guidelines as political interference, she was targeted with credible threats. Thomas Sobicinski told the House Judiciary Committee how Shapley’s testimony had led to the harassment of employees, employees whose parents got calls and children got followed. He specifically agreed that Wolf “has concerns for her own safety.”

It’s not just that Shapley’s testimony has led to political pressure. It has led directly to credible threats of violence against the prosecutor who crafted the original plea deal.

And in the wake of those credible threats of violence, David Weiss decided to ratchet up the charges against the President’s son.

The threats of violence may not have caused Weiss’ subsequent decision to renege on the plea deal (though that is one thing that is likely to be the topic of litigation going forward).  But the public record, at least, makes clear that those threats of violence correlate with a decision to seek more punitive treatment of the President’s son.

And that’s a very chilling prospect: that MAGA right wingers could bully prosecutors into taking punitive action against Hunter Biden.