Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee voted to publicly release the redacted testimony transcripts and affidavits from two IRS whistleblowers who alleged that the Justice Department gave preferential treatment to Hunter Biden.
While every Republican on the committee voted to release the documents, every Democrat voted against it.
And last Thursday, the committee released the redacted transcripts and affidavits, the contents of which appeared to confirm that federal prosecutors were slow-walking and obstructing the years-long investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals.
Testimony from IRS criminal investigator Gary Shapley outlined in detail the timeline of the investigation and included evidence of the ways the Justice Department, particularly Assistant US Attorney Leslie Wolf in Delaware, slow-walked or obstructed search warrants, witness interviews, and other investigative tools.
According to Shapley’s testimony, AUSA Wolf blocked search warrants for a storage unit belonging to Hunter Biden and for Joe Biden’s Delaware home where Hunter was living at the time and even gave Hunter’s legal team a heads-up about a possible search of the storage unit.
Shapley also read into the record a July 30, 2017 WhatsApp message Hunter Biden sent to Chinese businessman Henry Zhao. Zhao is a Chinese communist official whose investment firm is linked to the Chinese energy company CEFC.
In his message, Hunter said he was “sitting here with my father” waiting for Zhao to call him to explain why the “commitment” had not yet been “fulfilled.” Hunter warned that if he didn’t hear from Zhao, “the man sitting next to me” (AKA his father), and “every person he knows” will make sure that Zhao “will regret not following my direction.”
During separate testimony, the second unnamed IRS whistleblower confirmed the details of the WhatsApp message.
In a tweet last week, New York Times reported Kenneth Vogel pointed out that ten days after Hunter sent that WhatsApp message, a subsidiary of CEFC wired two payments totaling $5.1 million to bank accounts linked to Hunter Biden.
