Summary
- Nov. 2018-June 2020: Hunter Biden Probe Begins; President Trump Impeached While Pursuing Biden-Ukraine Information; Alleged Justice Department Undermining of Probe Begins
- June 2020-Dec. 2021: Evidence of Influence-Peddling With Nexus to Joe Biden Grows; Alleged Sabotage of Hunter Biden Probe Intensifies
- Jan. 2022-Jan. 2023: Prosecution Sought and Denied; IRS Whistleblowers Blindsided by What They Characterize as U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ Apparent Lack of Authority
- Feb. 2023-May 2023: Hunter’s Counsel Pleads Case Over Weiss’ Head; IRS Whistleblowers Emerge – and Face a Chill; Plea Deal Develops
- June 2023: FBI Stonewalls Congress Over Alleged Burisma-Biden Bribes; Trump Indictments Grow; Plea Deal Emerges; Weiss Strains To Harmonize His Story With Attorney General Merrick Garland About His Claimed Ultimate Authority
- July 2023: Burisma-Biden Bribes Document Released; Whistleblowers Testify About Obstructed Case Publicly; Hunter Biden’s Plea Deal Collapses in Court
- Aug. 2023-Present: Another Trump Indictment; Weiss Gets Special Counsel Authority He Wasn’t Supposed To Need; Biden Impeachment Inquiry Opens; Hunter Hit With Gun Indictment
Timeline in Detail
Nov. 2018-June 2020:
Hunter Biden Probe Begins;
President Trump Impeached While Pursuing Biden-Ukraine Information;
Alleged Justice Department Undermining of Probe Begins
Nov. 2018: The Internal Revenue Service’s Washington D.C. office opens investigation into Hunter Biden, code name “Sportsman,” as an offshoot of a probe into a foreign-based amateur online pornography platform.
According to IRS Special Agent Joseph Ziegler, the case agent who will later turn whistleblower, evidence will emerge Biden paid prostitutes to cross state lines – potential Mann Act violations. It is not clear whether the Justice Department pursues.
Jan. 2019: According to Special Agent Ziegler, the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI open a separate Hunter Biden investigation.
March/April 2019: Ziegler develops criminal charging material approved by IRS superiors and sent to Justice Department’s tax division for review. The two entities will work jointly on the case, as is customary. The Washington, D.C. and Delaware investigations will be merged.
April 25, 2019: Joe Biden announces his candidacy for president.
Aug. 15, 2019: Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) commences what will become a multi-year investigation into Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s brother James and their “financial connections to foreign governments and questionable foreign nationals.”
Sept. 24, 2019: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) opens impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump alleging Trump withheld Ukrainian aid to pressure officials to investigate the activities of Hunter and Joe Biden vis-à-vis the firing of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. In 2016, Biden leveraged $1 billion in U.S. aid to force Shokin’s firing. Shokin had been investigating Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter Biden had sat. Prosecutors will scrutinize Hunter over alleged tax crimes stemming from the hundreds of thousands of dollars Burisma paid him annually.
Oct. 2019: FBI learns that a Delaware computer repair shop obtained Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, and the following month verifies its authenticity.
Dec. 2019: FBI takes possession of the laptop and notifies IRS it “likely contained evidence of tax crimes,” according to IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley. Shapley, Ziegler’s colleague, will lead his investigatory team and also turn whistleblower.
Dec. 8, 2019: In an interview, Joe Biden says “I don’t know what he was doing” regarding Hunter Biden’s Burisma work.
Dec. 18, 2019: House votes to impeach Donald Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Jan. 27, 2020: Email evidence indicates that Hunter Biden has meeting with impeachment lawyers in Trump-Ukraine proceedings.
Feb. 5, 2020: Senate acquits Trump on a party-line vote, concluding first impeachment.
March 6-April 1, 2020: Shapley’s team prepares physical search warrants in Hunter Biden case. Having established probable cause for the warrants, IRS plans to conduct about 15 contemporaneous interviews. Shapley claims career DOJ officials halt IRS’ actions.
April 8, 2020: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) drops out of Democrat presidential primary, making Joe Biden the presumptive nominee.
June 16, 2020: Shapley tells IRS superiors “DOJ Tax has made a concerted effort to drag their feet concerning conducting search warrants and interviewing key witnesses in an effort to push those actions to a timeframe where they can invoke the Department of Justice rule of thumb concerning [ceasing activities] affecting elections.” Shapley alleges superiors took no action.
June 2020-Dec. 2021:
Evidence of Influence-Peddling with Nexus to Joe Biden Grows;
Alleged Sabotage of Hunter Biden Probe Intensifies
June 30, 2020: FBI informant tells handler that Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky told him he had been coerced into paying Joe and Hunter Biden $5 million apiece in exchange for help getting Shokin fired. This is memorialized in an FBI FD-1023 form. Shapley’s team will not see the document until years later, after being thrown off the case.
Aug.-Sept. 2020: IRS agents obtain WhatsApp messages between an executive from Chinese energy company CEFC and Hunter Biden from summer 2017, in which Biden says, “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” regarding a deal with the company. Biden threatens that should the deal not be resolved with the Chinese government-connected company’s executives – “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows … you will regret not following my direction.”
Investigators believe Biden was staying at the family’s Delaware beach guest house at this time. They seek location data for messages to corroborate in part whether Joe was with Hunter.
Sept. 3, 2020: Delaware Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf shoots down plan to nail down the Bidens’ location during the China call. According to Shapley, Wolf says while “a lot of evidence in our investigation would be found in the guest house … there is no way we will get that approved.” Wolf cites “optics” as a “driving factor in the decision.”
Shapley also recalls prosecutors did not want investigators reviewing CEFC communications, irrespective of any potential national security implications.
Wolf also indicates that a search warrant for emails from Blue Star Strategies, a Democrat-tied firm that lobbied for Burisma, in Shapley’s words, “would likely not get approved.” The agent adds, “This was a significant blow to the Foreign Agents Registration Act piece of the investigation” – that is, whether Hunter Biden lobbied for foreign individuals and entities as an unregistered foreign agent, a felony.
Sept. 4, 2020: Justice Department issues “cease and desist” of investigative activities in Hunter Biden case in run-up to the presidential election.
Sept. 23, 2020: Sen. Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) release report revealing “millions of dollars in questionable financial transactions between Hunter Biden and his associates and foreign individuals, including the wife of the former mayor of Moscow and individuals with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.”
Oct. 14, 2020: New York Post breaks the story of the abandoned Hunter Biden laptop. Among the paper’s revelations: Hunter introduced then-Vice President Biden to a top Burisma executive in April 2015, months before the vice president would help get Shokin fired. This is at odds with the Democrat presidential nominee’s claim he had “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” Twitter and Facebook suppress the story.
Oct. 19, 2020: Politico publishes letter signed by 51 prominent intelligence community officials indicating the New York Post’s story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Oct. 20, 2020: Investigators seek to do a “walk by” to confirm the location of and security around Hunter Biden’s California residence in preparation for an interview. DOJ Tax objects.
Oct. 22, 2020: Shapley raises concern to prosecutors that his team has not been granted access to Hunter Biden’s laptop. Assistant U.S. Attorney Wolf confirms prosecutors kept it from investigators, which Shapley calls “unprecedented.”
Wolf also indicates prosecutors would not permit a physical search warrant on Hunter Biden.
During the final presidential debate that evening, Biden rebuts claims about his family’s business dealings, citing the intelligence community letter. Biden also says, “My son has not made money, in terms of this thing about … China … The only guy that made money from China is this guy [Trump] … nobody else has made money from China.” Biden also states unequivocally, “I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.”
Oct. 23, 2020: Justice Department and FBI Special Agents from the Pittsburgh field office brief Wolf, among others, on contents of FD-1023 alleged Burisma-Biden bribes. It’s later learned that the Pittsburgh office believed that the allegations seemed credible, was partially corroborated, and merited investigation.
Nov. 3-Nov. 7, 2020: The 2020 presidential election. Joe Biden wins and elected as the 46th U.S. president.
Nov. 9, 2020: Sen. Grassley sends letter to then-Attorney General William Barr calling on Justice Department to review evidence that Hunter Biden and James Biden may have violated the Foreign Agent Registrations Act based on their dealings with CEFC.
Nov. 18, 2020: Sens. Grassley and Johnson release a supplement to their report on potential conflicts of interest stemming from the Biden family’s foreign business, including additional CEFC findings.
Dec. 3, 2020: Investigators prepare for a Dec. 8 “day of action,” to consist of document requests and some 12 interviews, including of Hunter Biden. As investigators meet with prosecution team at Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office, Lesley Wolf allegedly indicates she does not want them asking questions of subjects pertaining to Joe Biden.
Dec. 7, 2020: Investigators plan to notify Hunter Biden and his Secret Service protection on the morning of Dec. 8 that he will be approached that day for an interview as part of an official investigation.
Deviating from the plan, FBI headquarters notifies Secret Service headquarters and President-elect Biden’s transition team of coming interview, in Shapley’s words “essentially tipp[ing] off a group of people very close to President Biden and Hunter Biden,” and giving “this group an opportunity to obstruct the approach on the witnesses.”
Dec. 8, 2020: Hunter Biden’s attorneys call Shapley and his FBI counterpart, indicating Hunter will not participate in an interview. Investigators secure only “one substantive interview” on day of action, from Hunter Biden business associate Rob Walker. During that interview, skirting Wolf’s instructions, investigators briefly pursue a line of questioning wherein Walker discusses Joe’s involvement in Hunter’s business.
Dec. 9, 2020: News of Hunter probe becomes public, with reporting suggesting investigation extends beyond Hunter’s taxes to potential money laundering and financial ties to foreign figures and businesses. Hunter releases a statement: “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately.”
Dec. 10-14, 2020: From the “day of action,” investigators find that documents concerning one of Hunter’s business entities, Owasco, were archived in a northern Virginia storage unit. Investigators prepare to search it. Wolf, according to Shapley, tips off Hunter’s defense counsel to the planned search, possibly thwarting a potential investigative coup.
March 2, 2021: In a Shapley-convened briefing, investigators mention possibility of blowing whistle on the Justice Department’s handling of the case.
Oct. 13, 2021: Hunter Biden’s friend Kevin Morris loans him $1.4 million to settle outstanding taxes. Subsequent reporting suggests that all told, Morris will pay off well over $2 million in delinquent taxes on behalf of the president’s son.
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