WASHINGTON – Attorneys for IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley have provided a copy of Shapley’s hand-written notes from the Oct. 7, 2022, meeting with U.S. Attorney David Weiss to several House committees.
The unredacted version of the notes was provided to the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees, and a redacted version was provided to the House Judiciary Committee, further detailing the Oct. 7, 2022, meeting with the now-Special Counsel regarding the Hunter Biden investigation.
The release of the notes to the Judiciary Committee became necessary after the transcript of the interview of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent in Charge Thomas J. Sobocinski was leaked to the press. According to a story in the Washington Post, Sobocinski reportedly could not recall certain details of the Oct. 7 meeting and did not take notes during the meeting.
While it’s not unusual for people to have slightly different recollections of the same event, in this case, SSA Shapley took notes in real-time and that day emailed his summary of the meeting to several people, including his supervisor who contemporaneously corroborated his account—which is all very different from trying to recall information a year later with no notes.
The Justice Department’s actions have ultimately confirmed Shapley’s account of the meeting, as charges were presented for approval to the Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys in D.C. and California, Weiss did let the statute of limitations expire for the D.C. charges, and Weiss was appointed special counsel so he would have authority to bring charges outside Delaware.
Here is a copy of the text of the letter to the House Committee on the Judiciary. A copy of the letter and the hand-written notes can be found here.
September 13, 2023
Via Electronic Transmission
The Honorable Jim Jordan
Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. House of Representatives
The Honorable Jerrold Nadler
Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. House of Representatives
Dear Chairman Jordan and Ranking Member Nadler:
Yesterday the Washington Post published a story reportedly based on a transcript itobtained of the Committee’s interview of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent in Charge Thomas J. Sobocinski. 1
Mr. Sobocinski was one of seven attendees in the October 7, 2022 meeting at the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office, including U.S. Attorney David Weiss and top officials in the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Investigation’s Washington, D.C. Field Office. The meeting was documented that same day by our client, IRS Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) Gary Shapley, in an email to his chain of command that has since been made public by the House Ways and Means Committee. 2
According to the Washington Post story, Mr. Sobocinski reportedly failed to recall in his interview with Committee staff certain details of the meeting recorded in SSA Shapley’s email. However, Mr. Sobocinski apparently acknowledged that he took no notes in the meeting, nor did he document it in any contemporaneous fashion afterwards. By contrast, SSA Shapley took notes during the meeting. These notes, combined with his fresh memory of the meeting, formed the basis for the email he sent later that day and corroborate his current recollection.
In addition to the September 11 protected disclosure of nine new documents to the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance pursuant to § 6103(f)(5), we are today providing those committees an unredacted version of SSA Shapley’s contemporaneous handwritten notes. In order for you to assess the truthfulness and reliability of Mr. Sobocinski’s testimony, please find attached a version of the contemporaneous handwritten notes that redacts information not previously released by the House Ways and Means Committee.
Cordially,
/Tristan Leavitt/
Tristan Leavitt
President
Empower Oversight
/Mark D. Lytle/
Mark D. Lytle
Partner
Nixon Peabody LLP
ATTACHMENT
cc: Chairman Jason Smith
House Committee on Ways & Means
Ranking Member Richard Neal
Ranking Member, House Committee on Ways & Means
Chairman Ron Wyden
Senate Committee on Finance
Ranking Member Mike Crapo
Senate Committee on Finance
1 Jacqueline Alemany and Devlin Barrett, “Senior FBI agent disputes some whistleblowers’ claims about Hunter Biden probe,” Washington Post (Sep. 12, 2023), available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/12/hunter-biden-fbi-transcript-weiss-sobocinski.
2 Transcribed Interview of Gary Shapley, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means, Exhibit 10.