By Steve Neavling
The leading FBI agent in the bureau’s investigation of Hunter Biden contested claims by an IRS whistleblower that the Justice Department showed favoritism to the president’s son, according to a transcript from of an interview obtained by NBC News.
Thomas Sobocinski, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office, denied accusations by whistleblower Gary Shapley during a closed-door interview with the House Judiciary and Ways and Means committees on Sept. 7.
Shapley previously claimed that U.S. Attorney David Weiss said he did not have ultimate authority over the case.
“I was consistently aware that David Weiss had the authority in the U.S. to bring the charges where venue presented itself,” Sobocinski said. “The minute I got there in July of ’21, it was always the understanding and the communication between David Weiss and myself is that he had that authority to bring it on behalf of the Department.”
Sobocinski added that “I would have remembered it” if Weiss had said otherwise.
Shapley’s lawyers responded by sending a photograph of the whistleblower’s contemporaneous notes that included the handwritten line, “Weiss stated — He is not the deciding person.”
Shapley’s lawyers said Wednesday that “while it’s not unusual for people to have slightly different recollections of the same event, in this case … 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.”
Weiss himself denied Shapley’s claims and said he had ultimate authority over the case.
