Thread by @shipwreckedcrew

I'm going to reveal the big tease last night that was in my S U B S T A C K article this morning.

In the summer of 2020, the IRS Supervisor Gary Shapley had been complaining about DOJ and the AUSA in Delaware dragging their feet getting approvals for certain investigative steps.

The DOJ attorneys had used the Dem primary election season as an excuse to not go overt with the investigation into Hunter Biden to avoid it having an impact on the elections. They claimed multiple levels of approval were required -- likely just a way to dodge having to act.

But the Supervisor was reporting up his chain of command that the investigation was being obstructed -- it had been opened for 20+ months, most of the work was done, but the final stages were being blocked.

He speculated that in the summer DOJ was stalling until it could get to Sept. when DOJ policy said "No investigative Activity" until after the election."

On Sept 3, the AUSA wrote in an email to Shapley that "OEO was sitting on the warrant for Blue Star Strategies emails" and it wouldn't get approved.
When I read that Red Lights started flashing.
That's because of Blue Star Strategies was involved, and OEO was involved.

BSS is a DC based PR/Crisis Management firm. It was founded by two well-connected former Clinton Admin. people. It first came to my attention when I was looking into Joe Biden getting the Ukraine prosecutor fired -- the guy who had the open investigation of the owner of Burisma.

Hunter played a role in Burisma hiring BSS to do PR work in 2015 to improve Burisma and its owners image in western media. Millions of dollars belonging to Burisma were frozen in a UK bank because of corruption charges brought against the owner.

Burisma and BSS entered into a contract in Nov. 2015. Three weeks later one of the BSS principals was invited to participate in call planning the agenda of VP Joe Biden's upcoming trip to Ukraine. Why would a private PR company participate in planning the VP's trip to Ukraine?

That's the trip where Joe Biden ended up threatening to hold up $1 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine if the prosecutor wasn't fired. A couple months later the prosecutor was fired just as Joe had commanded.
Benefitting BSS's client -- Burisma and its owner.

There are emails from 2015 between Hunter and a Burisma executive--one year after Hunter joined the Burisma Board--about Burisma hiring BSS. The contract between them was sent by the Burisma Exec to Hunter for him to deliver to BSS. Then Hunter's dad delivers what Burisma wanted.

And what an FBI CHS says the Burisma owner paid $10 million to get. Hunter and Joe delivered.
In 2015 when this was happening, Hillary Clinton had been all but anointed by the press as the next POTUS in 2016. BSS was a Clinton-connected outfit.

Ukraine was going to a cash-cow for them so they stayed active in advising Ukraine entities. They even hired a former employee of the Ukraine Embassy in Washington to help them with access.
But HRC lost and BSS had to secure business in other ways.

Fast forward almost 5 years to the summer of 2020.
The IRS group investigating Hunter Biden is looking closely at his income from 2014 and 2015. That includes the $1 million a year he was paid to be on the Burisma board. There is also the question of $10 million in bribe money.

They want a warrant for emails from BSS -- but not just any warrant, they want a warrant that has to go through "OEO."

That is the DOJ "Office of Enforcement Operations."

That office has one job -- they review and approve/disapporve applications for Title III wiretaps.

But the email from the AUSA about OEO dragging its feet on the BSS warrant doesn't mention a wiretap -- it mentions emails.
You don't need a warrant to get emails more than 180 days old from an email service provider. A GJ Subpoena gets you those.

But if you want to get emails less than 180 days old, you have to get a warrant from a judge using the same process as when you get a wiretap. There is a lengthy "probable cause" section showing that criminal activity is ONGOING and the emails will contain evidence.

More importantly, a warrant for emails that goes through OEO is a warrant requesting getting new emails on a "real time" basis. So IRS was asking to monitor BSS's email traffic as it was happening -- not just after the fact.

Because this was an investigation of Hunter Biden, the email traffic would have been related to Hunter Biden or persons associated with Hunter Biden that were relevant to the investigation.

This means that the Hunter Biden tax investigation in Sept. 2020 wasn't just "historical" -- it was just looking backwards at the money he earned and didn't pay taxes on.
It meant the investigation concerned ONGOING CRIMINAL ACTIVITY IN THE SUMMER AND FALL OF 2020.

IRS Supervisor Shapley stated that the failure to get the BSS warrant hurt the FARA aspect of the investigation.

FARA is the "Foreign Agent Registration Act." Hunter and BSS were under investigation for being unregistered agents of a foreign government.

That's the same charge the Mueller SCO tortured Gen. Michael Flynn with.
But in the late summer of 2020, OEO had stalled and prevented the IRS from getting real-time email traffic that might have exposed that crime.

It would have also gotten all the historical email traffic of BSS -- maybe as far back as 2015 when the Ukraine prosecutor was fired just after Burisma hired BSS at Hunter Biden's urging.

l'm just listing these alleged events in chronological order:
Hunter joins Burisma board in April 2014.
Hunter burgers Burisma to hire BSS in summer 2015.
Burisma owner pays $10 million bribe in 2014-2015 time frame -- no certainty at this point.

Burisma signs contract with BSS in Nov. 2015.
BSS participates in planning agenda for Joe's Ukraine trip in Dec. 2015.
Joe tells Ukraine President to fire prosecutor during trip.
Prosecutor fired in Feb. 2016.
By 2018, all charges dropped against Burisma owner.

That's just the simple sequence of events.

Draw your own conclusions.

But as a prosecutor I would have wanted to examine all the communcations of all the parties in the relevant time frame.

Burisma ended up paying BSS over $600,000 over the term of their contract.

You can find more details on this in my story over at my "S U B S T A C K dot com" page under Shipwreckedcrew.