Shapley testified that warrants were ready as early as April 2020 but delayed until after the election and never pursued; that Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf agreed there was probable cause to search the guest house at Joe Biden’s Delaware home but cited the optics of doing so; that prosecutors told investigators not to ask about the “big guy” or “dad” in interviews; that agents were not allowed to follow up on the WhatsApp message in which Hunter claimed to be sitting next to his father; and that the Biden transition team was tipped off the night before planned interviews. Ziegler said the IRS had recommended felony charges for 2014 through 2019. [1]
His central charge was about authority. Attorney General Garland had told Congress that the case was in the hands of a Trump appointee. Shapley said that on 7 October 2022 Weiss told a room of senior officials “he was not the deciding person on whether charges were filed,” and that the U.S. attorneys in Washington and Los Angeles, both Biden appointees, had declined to bring charges in their districts. Weiss wrote to Congress on 7 June 2023 that he had “ultimate authority over the matter,” then on 30 June that his “charging authority is geographically limited to my home district,” and on 10 July that he had “not requested special counsel designation” but had “discussions with departmental officials.” [1]
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