According to IRS supervisory special agent and whistleblower Gary Shapley, Assistant United States Attorney Lesley Wolf told the prosecution team on the Hunter Biden investigation they could not pursue Kevin Morris, a benefactor of Hunter Biden, as a witness after she had a classified briefing with the CIA.
Shapley, who had previously alleged that President Joe Biden’s transition team was tipped off about the FBI’s plans to interview Hunter Biden, supervised line agents investigating Hunter Biden’s potential criminal violations. He was removed from the investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice in May 2023, after providing protected disclosures concerning prosecutors’ alleged mishandling of the investigation of Hunter Biden.
In testimony released by House Republicans, Shapley said that in and around August 2021, the prosecution team was discussing witnesses who needed to be interviewed. “During a recurring prosecution team conference call in or around late August 2021, Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) Lesley Wolf told the team that she and DOJ Tax Attorney Jack Morgan had recently returned from the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where they had been summoned to discuss Kevin Morris,” he wrote.
The Washington Free Beacon noted that Morris, an entertainment lawyer in Hollywood, California, who “controls Hunter Biden’s stake in a Chinese private equity firm,” “has spent at least $6.5 million on Hunter Biden’s legal fees, child support, and luxurious living arrangements in California … At the time of the CIA briefing, Hunter Biden was under investigation for allegedly not paying at least $1.4 million in taxes from 2014 through 2019.”
“AUSA Wolf stated that they were provided a classified briefing in relation to Mr. Morris and as a result we could no longer pursue him as a witness,” Shapley continued. “Investigators probed AUSA Wolf, but since her briefing was classified and she was apparently sanitizing it to an unclassified form to share over an open phone line, she did not elaborate with more information. She reiterated more than once that they were summoned to the CIA in Langley concerning Mr. Morris, and that because of the information provided there, he could not be a witness for the investigation.”
Shapley wrote that on August 20, 2021, he emailed Wolf asking for a classified briefing on the information the CIA had given Wolf about Morris, and Wolf “initially solicited DOJ National Security Division (NSD) Attorney Matthew McKenzie to assist with setting up the meeting.”
“McKenzie referenced a clearance level of T S – HCS-O as a compartmentalized section required to receive the briefing,” Shapley recalled. “It is believed that the HCS-O compartment is a CIA-specific sensitive compartment that was unlikely to have been obtained by DOJ Tax Attorney Morgan or AUSA Wolf. It is possible that this was simply another roadblock placed in front of investigators to continue to deny investigators access to all relevant information.”
Shapley said Wolf “ignored multiple attempts by me to arrange the briefing. … it served as yet another example of deviations from normal investigative processes in this matter. “
