Hunter Biden investigation: Agents warned against interviewing his adult children
Reese Gorman
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The investigators on the Hunter Biden criminal case were not allowed to follow up on a number of leads or interview relevant people, significantly hindering their investigations, according to the IRS whistleblowers.
IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley said they were blocked from following up on Hunter Biden’s WhatsApp messages, where he invoked his father’s name and pressured foreign business associates to give him money.
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“Investigators were not allowed to follow up on WhatsApp messages from Hunter Biden’s Apple I-Cloud backup,” Shapley said. “Where he suggested he was sitting next to his father.”
The text message referenced was sent on July 30, 2017, to Chinese businessman Henry Zhao, the chairman of China’s Harvest Fundin which he leveraged his father’s name and threatened CEFC executives unless a lucrative deal was worked out with Ye Jianmin, the chairman of CEFC, the Chinese energy company with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
“I am sitting with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment has not been fulfilled,” Hunter Biden told Zhao in one of the messages. “I am very concerned that [Ye] has either changed his mind and broken our deal without telling me or that he is unaware of the promises and assurances that have been made have not been kept.”
The messages resulted in millions of dollars being routed to Hunter Biden’s bank accounts.
Shapley said the other IRS whistleblower, special agent Joe Ziegler, asked to follow up on the messages and the request was “not supported by the prosecutor.”
The investigators also wanted to interview Hunter Biden’s adult children but were told they would be in “hot water” if they approached them.
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Ziegler said they needed to talk to Hunter Biden’s adult children because it was necessary to their investigation because of listed deductions on Hunter Biden’s tax returns.
“There’s some special situation that might come up that might cause caution to interviewing that witness, but I’ve never been told that you couldn’t approach someone to interview them as a part of an investigation,” Ziegler said.