Whistleblower: Full Timeline of DOJ OBSTRUCTION of IRS investigation into Hunter Biden, 2018-2023

Shapley has been with the IRS since 2009 and currently serves as a "supervisory special agent with the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation," a position he's held since 2018.

He told Congress that he was "blowing the whistle because the Delaware U.S. Attorney's Office, Department of Justice Tax, and Department of Justice provided preferential treatment and unchecked conflicts of interest in an important and high-profile investigation of the President's son, Hunter Biden."

Further, he stated that he is "alleging, with evidence, that DOJ provided preferential treatment, slow-walked the investigation, did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation."

"The investigation into Hunter Biden, code name Sportsman," Shapley told Congress, "was first opened in November 2018 as an offshoot of an investigation the IRS was conducting into a foreign-based amateur online pornography platform."

"In October 2019, the FBI became aware that a repair shop had a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden and that the laptop might contain evidence of a crime. The FBI verified its authenticity in November of 2019 by matching the device number against Hunter Biden's Apple iCloud ID."

"When the FBI took possession of the device in December 2019, they notified the IRS that it likely contained evidence of tax crimes. Thus, Special Agent [redacted] drafted an affidavit for a Title 26 search warrant, which a magistrate judge approved that month."

"In January 2020, I became the supervisor of the Sportsman case. The group, known as the International Tax and Financial Crimes group, or the ITFC, is comprised of 12 elite agents who were selected based on their experience and performance in the area of complex high-dollar international tax investigations."

"As early as March 6th, 2020, I sent a sensitive case report up through my chain of command at IRS reporting that by mid-March the IRS would be ready to seek approval for physical search warrants in California, Arkansas, New York, and Washington, D.C."

"Special Agent drafted an April 1st, 2020, affidavit establishing probable cause for these physical search warrants. We also planned to conduct approximately 15 contemporaneous interviews at that time."

Shapley noted in his testimony that in April 2020, it became apparent that Joe Biden was going to be the presidential nominee of the Democrat party, and at this point, it became apparent that the DOJ slowed down its investigation.

Shapley said "after former Vice President Joseph Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee for President in early April 2020, career DOJ officials dragged their feet on the IRS taking these investigative steps.

"By June 2020, those same career officials were already delaying overt investigative actions. This was well before the typical 60- to 90-day period when DOJ would historically stand down before an election. It was apparent that DOJ was purposely slow-walking investigative actions in this matter."

In June 2020, Shapley told his superiors that the search warrants had not yet been executed. "On a June 16th, 2020, call Special Agent [redacted] and I had with our chain of command up to the Director of Field Operations, I pointed out that if normal procedures had been followed we already would have executed search warrants, conducted interviews, and served document requests. Nevertheless, my IRS chain of command decided we would defer to DOJ."

After that, Shapley discussed the case with the Department of Justice and the US Attorney's Office in Delaware. While "investigative steps were denied," and "enforcement operations rejected by DOJ," Shapley and his team continued their investigation.

In August 2020, they "got the results back from an iCloud search warrant. Unlike the laptop, these came to the investigative team from a third-party record keeper and included a set of messages." This warrant unearthed a WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao from July 2017. It showed that Hunter was demanding money from Zhao, and asserted that his father, Joe Biden, was in the room. Joe Biden had left the office of the vice presidency under Obama just a few months prior in January 2017.

Prosecutors, Shapley explained, denied requests for an investigation as to the location from which the messages were sent. Shapley wanted to search the guest house on Biden's Delaware property where Hunter had stayed for a while.

In September 2020, Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf said that "there was more an enough probable cause for the physical search warrant there," and attested to Shapley that much more evidence would likely be found at the guest house. Wolf said, however, that a search warrant for that residence would not be approved.

Prosecutors, Shapley told Congress, "even wanted to remove Hunter Biden's name from electronic search warrants, 2703(d) orders, and document requests. Special Agent said on the call he felt uncomfortable with removing the subject's name from those documents just based on what might or might not be approved, as that seemed unethical. But his concerns were ignored."

"Wolf also said in September 2020 that a search warrant for the emails for Blue Star Strategies was being sat on by OEO [Office of Enforcement Operations]," Shapley said. Blue Star Strategies is a "consulting firm linked to the president’s son for potential illegal lobbying," Politico reported in 2021.

"The firm, Blue Star Strategies, took on as a client the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while Hunter Biden served on its board," the outlet further reported.

This, Shapley said, was "a significant blow to the Foreign Agents Registration Act piece of the investigation." On September 4, a cease and desist was issued by Deputy Attorney General Donoghue of "all overt investigative activities due to the coming election."

In October 2020, Shapley brought the Hunter Biden laptop to Wolf's attention. In an email, he said "We need to talk about the computer. It appears the FBI is making certain representations about the device, and the only reason we know what is on the device is because of the IRS CI affiant search warrant that allowed access to the documents. If Durham also executed a search warrant on a device, we need to know so that my leadership is informed. My management has to be looped into whatever the FBI is doing with the laptop. It is IRS CI's responsibility to know what is happening. Let me know when I can be briefed on this issue."