Thread by @tristanleavitt

🧵 I appreciate that @lukebroadwater drew from many transcripts for this story. But I think it obscures some important context from the congressional interview transcripts, which have been provided to us by press sources.

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1702771795583963550

SAC Waldon’s comment about “unsubstantiated allegations” appears to be broadly referring to SSA Shapley’s allegations that U.S. Attorney Weiss had an ax to grind against SSA Shapley after his protected disclosures in the 10/7 meeting saying the investigation had been mishandled.

To go backwards in time, SSA Shapley made protected disclosures to his chain of command throughout the investigation into Hunter Biden. For instance, Mike Batdorf confirmed that Shapley disclosed his concerns when Batdorf became Director of Field Operations (DFO) in early 2021.

But as SSA Shapley has testified, the IRS’s goal was simply to pursue the investigation like they would any investigation, so besides commiserating with his counterparts at the FBI (who also expressed concerns), he tried to keep moving forward with the U.S. attorney’s office.

Despite having closing various investigative avenues (especially regarding President Biden), the Delaware USAO at least supported the charges the IRS recommended in its Special Agent Report: felonies for 2014, ’15, and ’18, and misdemeanors for 2015-19. So did IRS leadership.

It’s important to understand that the first level at which decisions were out of U.S. Attorney Weiss’s hands was with the Tax Division at DOJ HQ, which never made a final decision on this case. As DFO Batdorf corroborated, DOJ Tax had to endorse the case for it to move forward.

DOJ Tax and Delaware USAO had pushed for the IRS to finalize those recommendations for leverage in a March 16, 2022 taxpayer status conference with Hunter Biden’s attorneys to get them to sign a statute of limitations extension on the 2014/2015 charges for which venue was D.C.

Hunter’s attorneys very likely went straight to the NYT, because two days after the meeting the NYT ran an article about obstacles to the case with the sympathetic headline: “Hunter Biden Paid Tax Bill, but Broad Federal Investigation Continues.” nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/…

(The NYT ran the story despite noting unironically, “Prosecutors generally fight to keep jurors from knowing whether defendants have paid their back tax bills…Such knowledge could influence jurors.” 2 months later the NY Post revealed who actually paid: .) nypost.com/2022/05/08/hol…

With the public discussion prompted by the NYT article and ensuing coverage, WH spokesperson Kate Bedingfield was asked the President’s position on 3/31/22. She said Biden stood by his 2020 comment that nothing Hunter did was unethical or inappropriate. realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/03/…

Consider this context when IRS investigators were told by DOJ Tax attorney Mark Daly that when the case was presented to the (career) 1st Assistant U.S. Attorney in D.C., she was optimistic about the case and agreed to partner with Delaware, saying she’d assign an AUSA to assist.

As a President Biden donor and political appointee, U.S. Attorney Matt Graves should have recused himself from the decision on whether to charge the President’s son, and not been the deciding official on whether DC would partner with Delaware on the case. fec.gov/data/receipts/…

Yet despite that unmitigated conflict (and with the President’s view out there that his son did nothing wrong), U.S. Attorney was the deciding person on whether charges were brought in D.C.—and he shot it down, declining to partner and arguing against charging at all.

On 4/3/22 WH Chief of Staff Ron Klain reaffirmed Biden’s view: “The president's confident that his son didn't break the law.” He also said, “Neither the president or any of us at the White House have had any contact with the Justice Department about that.” abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/w…

After this turn of events, of course IRS investigators noticed when Senator Bill Hagerty questioned AG Garland on 4/26/22 and the AG said: “He [Weiss] is in charge of that investigation, and there will not be any interference of any political…kind.”

Hagerty responded: “Earlier this month, White House Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, stated on national television that quote, ‘the President is confident that his son didn’t break the law,’ and the White House Communications Director said that President Biden maintains his position that his son did nothing that was unethical. This is on national television. The President’s already told his subordinates, clearly—these are people that he can fire at will—that he and his family did nothing wrong. How can the American people be confident that his Administration is conducting a serious investigation?”

Garland answered: “Because we put the investigation in the hands of a Trump appointee.”

Hagerty closed: “Well, I think the observation here is terribly critical, because there’s an obvious conflict of interest here because, if those who are investigating the Biden family and their enterprise can be fired by the head of the family who’s being investigated—that is, Joe Biden can fire the Attorney General in Delaware [U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware]—he can have an impact on all of your staffing.”

Hagerty asked whether DOJ had considered appointing a special counsel. Garland deflected while noting that special counsels still answer to the AG (as, of course, do U.S. attorneys with statutory “special authority” authority, despite claims contra at ).msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-…

Waldon, the other IRS attendee at the 10/7/22 meeting, testified that unlike Shapley, he "hadn't seen Merrick Garland's testimony." Batdorf testified he wasn't fully aware of it either. And the FBI agents interviewed in the last week made no mention of the AG's testimony.

AG Garland's hearing testimony was key to IRS investigators believing U.S. Attorney Weiss had a path forward despite U.S. Attorney Graves overriding career officials in D.C. and declining the case.

In the Central District of CA, Delaware prosecutors and DOJ Tax appeared to wait until President Biden's U.S. attorney nominee, Martin Estrada, was confirmed before presenting the case there in September 2022. And even then AUSA Wolf wanted to delay until after the election.

Waiting until after Estrada was confirmed suggested that—once again—an appointee of the President would not be recusing himself from making a decision about the President’s son, the very sort of conflict Sen. Hagerty had pointed out and Garland had insisted wasn’t an issue.

So in late September 2022 (well before the 10/6 Washington Post leak) a meeting was set between DE USAO, IRS, and FBI senior managers—i.e. excluding AUSA Wolf—for 10/7/22. The meeting was specifically scheduled around SSA Shapley’s international travel to ensure he could attend.

More to come tomorrow on the 10/7/22 meeting and what to make of the supposed "refutations" of SSA Shapley's account of that meeting... and then on how IRS supervisors inadvertently explained how SSA Shapley's removal from the case was an act of retaliation by U.S. Atty Weiss.

Readers have noted 3 additional things I should share here: 1) Estrada donated to Kamala Harris; 2) Matt Graves worked on the Biden campaign as a domestic policy advisor; and 3) Graves’ wife visited the White House 5 times the month he declined charges in the Hunter Biden case.

As for the 10/7/23 meeting, I've changed my mind about covering that yet, as it will be a lot more clear to everyone once the interview transcripts have been released publicly and they can follow along. Discussion of the 10/7 meeting made up the bulk of each of the interviews, since the topic of Weiss’s authority is the only topic the FBI and IRS authorized its witnesses to speak to the committees about during the pendency of the investigation. I could fill a small book with observations about those interviews and why SSA Shapley's handwritten notes and subsequent contemporaneous email summary that evening are the most reliable summary of the meeting. But press accounts releasing selective excerpts of the interviews that they claim undercut the whistleblowers are doing the public--which doesn't have the transcripts to see for themselves--a great disservice.

So I'll turn to why SSA Shapley was removed. While the NYT parrots Waldon's claim re: "unsubstantiated allegations," transcripts show Shapley's removal was forced by U.S. Attorney David Weiss as retaliation for Shapley's protected disclosures about the handing of the Biden case.

Going into the 10/7/22 meeting, SSA Shapley's FY 2022 evaluation noted he "quickly set [himself] apart as a leader among [his] peers" and his "strong desire to seek excellence no matter the situation has provided a positive impact to [the] entire field office."⬇️

The meeting changed everything for SSA Shapley. His email summary noted that when the IRS and FBI disclosed concerns about updates and communication in the case, they were "surprisingly contentious." Shapley testified to Congress the meeting "ended quite awkwardly" after that.

SSA Shapley’s expression of his concerns clearly stood out, because in the days following it appears prosecutors went back for the first time and reviewed the discovery materials he had provided back in early March 2022 when the Delaware USAO anticipated bringing a case in D.C.

Going back, prosecutors likely read for the first time SSA Shapley’s protected whistleblower disclosures to his chain of command throughout the case, such as a May 2021 memo where he wrote: “We do not agree with [AUSA Wolf’s] obstruction” on pursuing campaign finance violations.

Two things resulted. (1) On 10/24/22 AUSA Wolf requested all of SSA Shapley case-related communications, including those since the spring. (2) U.S. Attorney Weiss told SAC Waldon he didn't want to talk to SSA Shapley anymore, something DFO Batdorf found “extremely troubling.”

As meetings were cancelled it became clear the investigative team was being cut out, which SSA Shapley could tell was in retaliation for the protected disclosures they found in his first round of discovery. Once Weiss got his hands on the second round of discovery it got worse.

DFO Batdorf told SSA Shapley on 12/13/22 he could blow the whistle if he needed to. But when Weiss called IRS SAC Waldon and DFO Batdorf on 12/22/22 and told them he was unhappy with what Shapley’s communications had to say, they agreed to remove Shapley from the case.

DFO Batdorf specifically testified to Congress that the decision to remove SSA Shapley was not because of any misconduct on his part or a belief he had leaked information. Rather, it was to appease US Atty Weiss and try to move the Hunter Biden tax charges forward to prosecution.