The period covered by the pardon goes all the way back to January 1, 2014 for any and all crimes Hunter may have committed, too. You know, like tax crimes. The statute of limitations for tax crimes is ten years.
This wasn't just about the gun crimes.
Meanwhile, 363 people were convicted of tax fraud in 2023, and 63% went to prison.
Fox News correspondent David Spunt has the latest on the first son's refusal to testify on 'Special Report.'
The assistant U.S. attorney who was accused oflimiting questionsrelated to President Biden during the federal investigation into Hunter Biden is no longer employed by the Justice Department, Fox News has learned.
Lesley Wolf, who served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Delaware, is no longer with the DOJ, according to a source familiar with the situation.
The source said Wolf had longstanding plans to leave the Department of Justice and did so weeks ago.
Wolf, who IRS whistleblowers claimed slow-walked the Hunter Biden investigation, is sitting for a transcribed interview before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning.
Specifically, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley alleged that Wolf worked to "limit" questioning related to President Biden and apparent references to Biden as "dad" or "the big guy."
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.
WASHINGTON — The former federal prosecutor who allegedly shielded President Biden and his son Hunter
during a criminal investigation testified 79 times to Congress that she
was “not authorized” by the Justice Department to answer questions
about the case, according to a transcript reviewed by The Post.
Former Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf repeatedly cited a
five-page authorization letter from Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer as she refused to answer questions during a House Judiciary Committee deposition last week.
Weinsheimer’s Dec. 12 letter, also reviewed by The Post, says: “[T]he
Department generally does not authorize congressional testimony from
line-level personnel, especially relating to an ongoing investigation
with charges pending in court. The Department has declined to do so in
connection with this matter.”
Wolf’s dozens of refusals to answer questions — just one day after the full House voted to authorize an impeachment inquiry
into President Biden — frustrated attempts to firm up the storyline
involving what whistleblowers say was a sweeping cover-up by Wolf and
colleagues to protect the Biden family.
The near-blanket rejection of questions follows pressure from House
Republicans on the administration to allow witness testimony and could
bolster GOP arguments that the White House is obstructing the inquiry,
which itself could form an article of impeachment.
Two IRS agents who worked on the long-running tax fraud investigation
into Hunter Biden, which focused on his foreign income from countries
such as China and Ukraine, alleged in prior testimony to House
committees that Wolf tipped off the first son’s lawyers to investigative
steps and forbade inquiries into Joe Biden, even when communications
mentioned him.
Wolf served on the squad of prosecutors that signed off on a
probation-only plea deal in June for the first son on tax and gun
charges, which fell apart the following month under scrutiny from a federal judge.
IRS supervisor Gary Shapley, who oversaw the Hunter Biden
investigation for three years, and case agent Joseph Ziegler, who worked
on the inquiry for five years, made a series of specific claims against
Wolf, which she did not refute in her testimony.
Tax investigators learned in December 2020 that Wolf “reached out to
Hunter Biden’s defense counsel and told them” about investigators’ plans
to search a northern Virginia storage unit that contained business
records, “circumventing our chance to get to evidence from potentially
being destroyed, manipulated or concealed,” Ziegler testified in July.
Shapley testified that investigators were months earlier barred from
searching a guest house at Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home, where
Hunter often stayed.
Shapley said that on Sept. 3, 2020, “Wolf told us there was more than
enough probable cause for the physical search warrant there, but the
question was whether the juice was worth the squeeze.”
Wolf also allegedly objected during a meeting on Dec. 3, 2020, to questioning a key Biden family associate, Rob Walker, about the president.
“Wolf interjected and said she did not want to ask about the big guy
and stated she did not want to ask questions about ‘dad,’” he said.
“When multiple people in the room spoke up and objected that we had
to ask, she responded, there’s no specific criminality to that line of
questioning. This upset the FBI, too,” Shapley testified.
Wolf served as a key point person for the investigation, serving under Delaware US Attorney David Weiss.
The whistleblowers accused Weiss’ office of giving Hunter Biden’s
legal team advance knowledge of a planned interview attempt in late
2020, scuttling a planned approach, and said prosecutors didn’t pass
along a paid FBI informant’s tip that Joe and Hunter Biden received $10 million in bribes from Ukrainian energy company Burisma,
which paid Hunter a salary of up to $1 million to serve on its board
beginning in 2014 when his vice president dad led US policy toward the
country.
Wolf allegedly instructed FBI agents in August 2020 to remove
references to Joe Biden from a search warrant affidavit, writing,
“Someone needs to redraft [the affidavit] … There should be nothing
about Political Figure 1 in here,” according to an email released by the Ways & Means Committee.
“That email, I think, is super important because it’s a one-off
example in writing of the constant concern of following investigative
leads that might lead to Joe Biden,” Ziegler said last week in a Fox
News interview.
“The FBI agents who drafted that affidavit, they believed that they
had sufficient evidence — probable cause — to support including
Political Figure 1 in that affidavit,” said the self-identified Democrat.
“That related to [Ukrainian energy company] Burisma, access to Joe
Biden and access to the administration and there was ample evidence that
was included in that affidavit that’s supported including Political
Figure 1. That has a waterfall effect on the investigation because those
emails that we’re searching for might not come through to the team.”
Shapley and Ziegler said they were not allowed to get cellphone
geolocation data that could have proved Joe Biden was with his son in
July 2017 when Hunter sent a threatening text message to a Chinese government-linked businessman saying, “I am sitting here with my father,” and warning of retribution.
Within 10 days of that message, $5.1 million flowed to accounts
linked to Hunter and first brother James Biden from CEFC China Energy —
after a tranche of $1 million earlier that year, less than two months
after Biden left office as vice president.
A May 2017 email penciled in Joe Biden, referred to as the “big guy,” for a 10% cut from CEFC dealings.
The IRS whistleblowers say that — in addition to preferential
treatment for Joe and Hunter Biden — Attorney General Merrick Garland
misled Congress under oath about Weiss’ ability to independently bring
criminal charges against Hunter Biden.
Biden-appointed US attorneys in Los Angeles and Washington have
confirmed in testimony that they declined to partner with Weiss, who in
August was elevated by Garland to be a special counsel, allowing him to bring charges independently outside of Delaware.
The DOJ didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Wolf’s testimony.
The short version is: In 2004, Jared Kushner's father Charles, a real estate magnate in New Jersey and New York, pleaded guilty to a tax fraud scheme in which he claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars in phony deductions for office expenses at the partnerships he created to manage the apartment buildings he owned. Kushner, a major donor to the Democratic Party, also pleaded guilty to fraudulently making hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in the names of employees and associates who didn't know their names were being used. Finally, Kushner pleaded guilty to retaliating against a cooperating witness in the case — his sister. He did so by setting a trap in which he hired a prostitute to lure his sister's husband into a sexual encounter in a New Jersey hotel, where the action was secretly photographed and videotaped. Kushner sent the pictures and tape to his sister as revenge, apparently motivated by Kushner's belief that she and her husband were helping U.S. Attorney Christie and his prosecutors. ... [I]n a 2014 interview with the New York real estate publication The Real Deal, Jared called his father's treatment "obviously unjust" and said the experience had soured him on an earlier ambition to become a prosecutor. "If you're convicting murderers, it's one thing," Jared said. "It's often fairly clear. When you get into things like white-collar crime, there are often a lot of nuances. Seeing my father's situation, I felt what happened was obviously unjust in terms of the way they pursued him."