Most Americans don't care about Hunter Biden. Upon hearing his name, they roll their eyes and direct their attention elsewhere. Which is unfortunate, because those who don't turn away are swamped by a firehose of falsehoods. In the absence of scrutiny, professional liars find new mouthpieces to keep recycling the same bogus claims about imaginary corruption. Gary Shapley, the IRS "whistleblower” touted by CBS and Murdoch media, is the latest in a succession of individuals who adhere to a five-step disinformation template:
Step 1: Scavenge private emails to find a fragment that seems ambiguous.
Step 2: Falsify the context and meaning of the fragment in order to fabricate “evidence” of corruption.
Step 3: Embellish the falsified fragment with other lies.
Step 4: Repeat endlessly.
Step 5: Smear others in the media or government who don't coopt your false claims, by accusing them of a coverup of corruption.
Debunking those five steps requires extended explainers. Here’s the Part 1 of an accounting of Shapely's campaign of deception.
Shapely’s Setup: The Big Lie about “10 held by H for the big guy?"
On May 13, 2017, James Gilliar posed a question in an email, which would be truncated years later so it could serve as a right wing meme. He asked if someone he didn't know, Joe Biden, might want to join the other prospective partners, which included Hunter Biden and James Biden, in launching an investment advisory business to be financed by a large Chinese energy conglomerate, CEFC China Energy. The clear answer was no, as confirmed by their lawyers, and by all partners who signed the final contract on May 22nd. Not that it would have mattered, because their stillborn enterprise, (the non-Chinese 50% stake was called Oneida Holdings, while the overall venture was called SinoHawk Holdings), was never funded for reasons that eventually became obvious. CEFC turned out to be a Chinese Enron, a house of cards headed for collapse within a year. So all the emails and extended negotiations added up to sound and fury signifying nothing.
All these facts were easily accessible on Google well before the 2020 election. Which is why anyone who spent five minutes on basic fact checking can be certain that Tony Bobulinski is a big fat liar, and that anyone who touts him as a credible "whistleblower" is also a big fat liar. Bobulinksi became the self-appointed poster boy for the Hunter Biden "corruption scandal," using the same M.O. deployed by everyone else touting the contents of the notorious laptop. He scavenged email correspondence to pluck out one singular fragment; he then falsified the fragment's context and meaning; and then presented it as a "smoking gun" for Fox News. He then doubled down by smearing others who ignored his lies, and accused them of engaging in a coverup.
Read the email for yourself:
Bobulinski excised the parts that refuted his story—the question mark, words like "provisional" and "Expectations," the subsequent documentation and contract—to reverse the intent of the message and suggest that Joe Biden was somehow involved in a business with China. His fraud went viral, as the pretext for a firehose of lies. Over the past two years, that fragment—"10 held by H for the big guy," or its popular paraphrasing, "10% for the big guy"—has been amplified endlessly, and become a defining marker of dishonesty. Anyone who cites that email fragment to show that Joe Biden had any ownership stake in the aborted venture is a liar. Anyone who cites the email to refute Joe Biden's denial of involvement is a liar. And anyone who says this never-funded venture was lucrative is a liar. New York Post columnist Miranda Devine actively repeats all these lies constantly, whereas others in Murdoch media, such as Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier, are more subtle and merely insinute lies by invoking the same email fragment.
Bobulinski claimed that Joe Biden was "involved" with the venture because he was introduced to the former Vice President before the contract was signed; and he lied when he said that they "discussed business," when there was never any business to discuss, only his hopes and dreams. His hope to entice the Joe to sign on was quickly vanquished.
The New York Post Amplifed the Same Bogus Narrative Using Another Falsified Email Fragment
Bobulinski's media rollout dovetailed with the New York Post's notorious Hunter Biden laptop story on October 14, 2020. The M.O. is identical, wherein the paper falsified the context and meaning of an email fragment so as to fabricate a phony story about Joe Biden's "involvement" in his son's business affairs. In 2015, Joe Biden made a brief appearance at a charity fundraising dinner in a private room at Georgetown restaurant, and he was introduced to everyone there, including a Ukrainian consultant working for the board of directors of Burisma. If you've ever been to one of those events, you know the opportunity for discussing substantive business is close to zilch. If you're an adult, you know a meeting is nothing but a gesture without concrete followup action. Subsequently, the consultant sent Hunter an email thanking him for a chance to meet the Vice President. That was all of it.
The New York Post concealed all those key facts in order to deceive readers into thinking that they "discussed business" and that the Vice President was "involved" in his son's affairs, and that his denial of involvement was untrue. The story’s headline, "Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad," pushed two blatant lies, because the email itself was never a “smoking gun,” which is definitive proof of something; and it did not reveal how Vice President Biden was briefly introduced to the Burisma consultant. Though the story was touted everywhere on right wing media, professional liars insisted that the New York Post story, like Bobulinski's story, was suppressed to rig the outcome of the 2020 election.
To amplify Tony Bobulinski's lies, Tucker Carlson featured him as a "whistleblower" in two episode-long profiles in October 2020 and October 2022. A whistleblower is someone who observes improper behavior inside an organization and reports it, which Bobulinski couldn't demonstrate if they put a gun to his head. He also lied and said he had been an instituional investor, and lied to say he had been accused of being a Russian shill. Bobulinski's biggest lies were his allegations of a coverup, by the media and by the Justice Department. He claimed his story was ignored by mainstream media, when the truth is that he refuses to answer questions from legitimate news outlets, who would confront him about his transparently false claims. And he blames the Justice Department of ignoring his accusations, even though he observed zero activity that was in any way remotely illegal.
Catherine Herridge, an outlier at CBS News due to her contempt for fact checking, has been pushing Bobulinski as an unnamed “whistleblower” cited by Sen. Charles Grassley, who smeared the FBI because it didn't act on Bobulinski's story. Here's how she maligned the DOJ in this singular tweet:
Former Hunter Biden business partner, who worked directly on 2017 China energy deal, never asked to testify to Delaware grand jury. Handling of Bobulinski latest indicator prosecutors may have avoided probing allegations about Hunter’s father.
Let's count Herridge's lies:
- Bobulinski never, "worked directly on [any] 2017 China energy deal," because there never was any deal, specifically there never was any funded investment or operating business, only talk about launching something. Money talks, bullshit walks.
- Bobulinski never observed anything that was remotely illegal, which is why he would never be asked to testify before any grand jury. His personal grievance—Hunter tried to launch a separate CEFC venture behind Tony's back—is a civil contract dispute of no concern to law enforcement.
- Bobulinski never offered up "allegations about Hunter’s father" because he had nothing to offer, only a social introduction that went nowhere.
The IRS “Whistleblower” Amplifies Bobulinski’s Lies
Now a new phony “whistleblower” has emerged. Gary Shapley amplifies Catherine Herridge's lies and says the Department of Justice suppressed his investigation of the notorious email fragment and other things. Like Bobulinski, he insinuates a “coverup" of imaginary evidence that withers under nominal scrutiny.
Shapley’s dishonesty becomes obvious if you consider his job description. He works for the IRS, which means his job is to follow the money. I't doesn't concern the IRS how Hunter Biden earned his income, only that it was properly reported and that the right amount of taxes were paid. But Shapely was less concerned about reviewing financial records and more obsessed with publicizing soundbites that had nothing to do with crimes, but are easily distorted in the media to create an illusion of corruption.
Shapely's 7,500-word prepared statement, along with his other testimony for the House Ways and Means Committee, reveals him to be an incompetent crackpot. He tells his story by dwelling on insignificant details while excluding critical facts. He doesn't know how to organize his thoughts. The unspoken context is that tax liability was always a sideshow to the broader Biden investigation launched under Trump's Justice Department in 2018.
The DOJ, and other talking heads touting the Hunter Biden laptop narrative, focused primarily on a strained theory of political corruption, some kind of influence peddling or pay-for-play activities that could be tied to Joe Biden. Because of recent Supreme Court rulings, those cases are extremely difficult to sustain. As a threshold matter, prosecutors must identify a quid pro quo, an exchange wherein the people paying Hunter Biden received some special benefit that was not arms-length. No one anywhere has ever described such an exchange involving the Bidens, much less proved one. (They’ve only been able to dredge up two transparent lies: One lie about Joe Biden seeking to get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired, and a second lie about receiving a bribe. Both are debunked here.)
Needless to say, it was physically impossible for any Biden to sell influence during the Trump Administration, which overlapped with the beginning, middle and end of Bobulinski's CEFC saga. But professional liars like Jonathan Turley and Mollie Hemingway, citing zero evidence, kept insisting that the Bidens’ influence peddling was an established fact. So David Weiss, the U.S. Attorney appointed by Trump, spent five years looking for some pretext of a corruption case. He came up with nothing, which may be one reason that Shapely now accuses him of a coverup.
The IRS uncovered almost all the evidence of Hunter Biden's tax offenses in 2018, and it could have wrapped up the matter in 2019. But Trump appointees, and Shapely, who joined the effort in 2020, were hoping to find something more inflammatory.
Shapley Embraces Secrecy Because He Wants to Ambush the Bidens
Shapley accuses David Weiss of stalling the IRS investigation, and that appears to be why it took five years to complete the effort. But that stalling was driven by a decision to violate IRS regulations in order to operate in secrecy. If Hunter Biden were treated like any other taxpayer, the IRS would have contacted him in 2019 and asked him to provide business records and backup. But the DOJ opted for secrecy, which dragged out everything. The IRS lawyer tasked with the investigation testified to that point:
So one of the first disagreements I recall between the IRS investigators and the prosecutors was the idea of going overt. When we work criminal tax investigations, there's an IRS policy in place that we need to interview the subject within 30 days of elevating the investigation….[W]ith tax cases, the evidence is typically historical, which allows us to go overt sooner, which is why this is stated in the IRM [Internal Revenue Manual].
I thought this to be even more true about wanting to go overt, because at the time of starting the investigation Hunter Biden had unfiled returns for 2016 and '17 and had unpaid taxes for '15. And I wanted to put Hunter Biden on notice in the event that he filed tax returns and potentially paid his taxes.
In a normal investigation, we would typically advise the subject of the criminal investigation, try to get a statement from them, try to get an understanding of why there were unfiled returns. And it sort of puts us on notice -- or puts them on notice that the IRS is looking into them currently and then it kind of preserves the record in an essence.
I was overruled during multiple meetings almost to the point that I couldn't bring it up anymore to the attorneys, and they would get visually upset with me. And I was continually being told that we had to stay covert to preserve potential evidence from the FBI side of the investigation.
Shapley fully embraced that secrecy, which had nothing to do with Hunter Biden's taxes. Shapely had planned a “day of action” to ambush the Bidens and their friends with FBI agents who would pose gotcha questions and secretly tape their conversations on December 8, 2020. Shapley’s idea was stupid because nobody can recall financial records or extended email correspondence off the top of their head. Anyone asked to speak to the IRS knows to prepare ahead of time, so he is aware of what he’s talking about. Shapley objected that the Bidens had been tipped off about the investigation after the November 2020 election.
The notorious email fragment touted by Bobulinski is a window into Shapely's larger fever dream, as he explained in his prepared statement:
On December 3rd, 2020, we had around a 12-hour long meeting at the United States Attorney's Office in Delaware with the prosecution team...We shared with prosecutors our outline to interview Hunter Biden's associate, Rob Walker. Among other things, we wanted to question Walker about an email that said: "Ten held by H for the big guy." We had obvious questions like who was H, who the big guy was, and why this percentage was to be held separately with the association hidden.
But AUSA 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." 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. And as I'll explain in a moment, the IRS and FBI agents conducting this interview tried to skirt AUSA Wolf's direction.
Shapley deploys a common technique among professional liars, which is to say they still “have questions" whet the obvious answers debunk their suspicions. Five minutes on Google would have answered Shapely's questions about, "Ten held by H for the big guy.” He would have learned that James Gilliar's question about including “the big guy” was preempted by legal documentation; so nothing was ever hidden or improper, much less remotely “criminal” as he imagines. And since Shapely's job is to follow money; his concern about an aborted never-funded venture was irrelevant. "AUSA 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,’” for the very obvious reason that Joe Biden's tax returns have always been in the public domain.
And even if the CEFC venture were real and the ownership stakes were not public, it made no sense to interview Walker, who neither wrote the email nor was a Biden family member. Anyone who knows anything about a criminal investigation knows that Walker's conjecture about Gilliar's intent is inadmissible hearsay. Shapley deceptively presents the DOJ’s unwillingness to play along as some kind malfeasance.
Nonetheless, Shapley ignored the DOJ’s directive and sent two FBI agents to approach Rob Walker unannounced at his home in Arkansas and to secretly tape him on December 8, 2020. Walker told the FBI what any fool could ascertain, that Gilliar's email was just wishful thinking. But Shapley offered up the transcript of the FBI conversation with Walker as part of his testimony, even though it makes him look stupid. Instead, he cites Walker’s other random comments as imaginary evidence for Shapely's dreams of Biden criminality. From his prepared statement:
I can't know for certain whether FBI's advance notice played a role or not, but of the 12 interviews we hoped to conduct on our day of action, we only got one substantive interview. It was with Rob Walker in Arkansas, and it was exactly the sort of interview we expected to have if the FBI hadn't tipped off Secret Service and the transition team.
In the interview, the FBI agent tried to get Rob Walker to talk about the "ten held by H" email while not directly contradicting AUSA Wolf's direction not to ask about the, quote, "big guy." The FBI agent said, this is a quote: "The famous email that Tony was pointing out like the equity split, can you tell me your opinion of that, when it's going through like, you know, ten B dot-dot-dot held by H?"
Walker answered: "I think that maybe James was wishful thinking or maybe he was just projecting that, you know, if this was a good relationship and this was something that was going to happen, the VP was never going to run, just protecting that, you know, maybe at some point he would be a piece of it, but he was more just, you know -- it looks terrible, but it's not. I certainly never was thinking at any time the VP was a part of anything we were doing."
And yet it was clearly valuable for the investigators to ask about Hunter Biden's dad, as Walker went on to describe an instance in which the former Vice President showed up at a CEFC meeting.
Walker said: "We were at the Four Seasons and we were having lunch and he stopped in, just said hello to everybody. I don't even think he drank water. I think Hunter Biden said, 'I may be trying to start a company or try to do something with these guys and could you?' And I think he was like, if I'm around and he'd show up."
The FBI agent asked: "So you definitely got the feeling that that was orchestrated by Hunter Biden to have like an appearance by his dad at that meeting just to kind of bolster your chances at making a deal work out?"
Walker answered: "Sure."
The FBI agent continued: "Any times when he was in office, or did you hear Hunter Biden say that he was setting up a meeting with his dad with them while dad was still in office?"
Walker answered: "Yes."
And, inexplicably, the FBI agent changed the subject.
Just as Bobulinski and the New York Post did, Shapley obsesses over an anodyne meet-and-greet by Joe Biden to infer that it was highly improper and possibly illegal. To underscore the obvious, this has zero connection with Shapely's job, which is to establish taxable income and tax liability, and though it was physically impossible for CEFC, which collapsed in early 2018, to obtain any improper benefit during the Trump Administration .
Shapley Falsifies A WhatsApp Message
Here's another example of how Shapley follows the M.O. of Bobulinski and the New York Post. Once again, he plucks out a text message of zero significance and deceitfully present it as salacious evidence of corruption:
Nevertheless, prosecutors denied investigators' requests to develop a strategy to look into the messages and denied investigators' suggestion to obtain location information to see where the texts were sent from.
For example, we obtained a July 30th, 2017, WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, where Hunter Biden wrote: "I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father."
What does this demonstrate? Taken at face value, Hunter asked someone to follow through on a commitment. Maybe he acted like a jerk when his father was out of office. So what? Taxable income is derived from funds transfers, not from WhatsApp messages. And it's impossible to tie that message to anything remotely illegal. Remember, no one thought Joe Biden would ever return to public office in July 2017. But Shapely smears the Justice Department for declining to pursue his fantasy, which was outside his lane of taxable income.
As it turned out, the notorious WhatsApp message turned out to be a fake. As Hunter Biden's lawyer informed the House Committee:
The facts, which some media has now reported, are that President Biden and our client were not together that day, the company being referenced was not CEFC but Harvest Financial Group (with a person who also had the initial “Z”), and that no transaction actually occurred....Many media articles confirm that data purported to have come from Mr. Biden’s devices has been altered or manipulated. You, or someone else, did that again. All of the misstatements about this communication and your use of a false text are good examples of how providing one-sided, untested, and slanted information leads to improper conclusions.
Shapley’s Bigger Lie About A Justice Department “Coverup"
Shapely’s pattern, of falsifying texts in order to fabricate evidence of corruption, frames his bigger smear against the Justice Department. He says Attorney General Merrick Garland gave false testimony when he said U.S. Attorney David Weiss had unfettered discretion to pursue cases against the Bidens. Shapely’s proof: His hearsay recollection of what Weiss said in a meeting.
Shapely's other deceptions require another detailed explainer, which will be provided shortly. For another perspective on his deceptions, see Marcy Wheeler’s analysis here and here.