Ex-FBI agent ‘upset’ by Hunter probe tipoff to Biden transition team
A former FBI agent told the House Oversight Committee last month that the bureau tipped off President Biden’s transition team about plans to interview first son Hunter Biden in December 2020, backing key testimony from an IRS whistleblower.
The ex-FBI supervisory special agent — identified as Joe Gordon in whistleblower Gary Shapley’s testimony — told the panel in a July 17 transcribed interview that his higher-ups gave Secret Service brass a heads-up about the planned questioning, rather than only notifying the local field office of the protective agency.
“I know I was upset when I learned about it,” the former investigator said, according to a transcript released Monday, adding that Shapley’s recollection of the matter was “correct.”
“And there was no explanation provided,” Gordon went on. “It’s just, this is what’s happening.”
The Secret Service warning spoiled plans to interview Hunter and other witnesses as part of a proposed “Day of Action” set for Dec. 8, 2020, days after the first son received Secret Service protection following Joe Biden’s election to the presidency.
Neither Gordon nor Shapley was permitted to go near Hunter’s house — a command that the former FBI agent said he had never been given in his 20-year career in federal law enforcement — and were told to wait for a phone call on Dec. 8 from Secret Service granting them authorization to interview Hunter.
But the call never came, Gordon and Shapley both testified.
Oversight Republicans said the testimony further corroborated allegations from Shapley and IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler that Delaware US Attorney David Weiss mishandled the Hunter probe.
On Friday, US Attorney General Merrick Garland elevated Weiss to special counsel status at the prosecutor’s request — weeks after a plea deal his office negotiated with the first son blew up in federal court.
“We have no confidence in U.S. Attorney Weiss as Special Counsel given his inability to prevent the Biden transition team from being contacted and other misconduct during the Biden criminal investigation,” Oversight GOP lawmakers said Monday on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
On May 26, Shapley told the House Ways and Means Committee in a transcribed interview that FBI headquarters had “essentially tipped off” Secret Service about the “day of action” plan.
The phone call on Dec. 7, 2020, warned “a group of people very close to President Biden and Hunter Biden and gave this group an opportunity to obstruct the approach on the witnesses,” he pointed out.
“Gordon and I waited in the car outside of Hunter Biden’s California residence waiting for a phone call,” Shapley said. “It was no surprise that the phone call SSA Gordon received was from his ASAC Alfred Watson, who informed us that Hunter Biden would contact us through his attorneys.”
“We received a telephone call later that morning from Hunter Biden’s attorneys, who said he would accept service for any document requests, but we couldn’t talk to his client,” he added. “The public news of our investigation hit the press the next day.”
In the event, Shapley recalled, investigators were only able to interview one witness, Biden family associate Rob Walker — who helped distribute hundreds of thousands of dollars from foreign sources to members of the first family.
The FBI sent a letter to Gordon before his congressional testimony, cautioning him against sharing about “deliberations or ongoing investigative activity.”
The transcript shows that the letter caused Gordon and his attorney to request that the committee narrow the scope of its questioning to the foiled approach to Hunter Biden. Attempts to discuss deliberations about potential charges for the first son were among the questions ruled out of bounds.
Those would have included potential Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) violations and other offenses that prosecutors in Weiss’ office have considered during their investigation.
Gordon’s attorney declined to let his client answer questions about Washington, DC, US Attorney Matthew Graves not pursuing charges against Hunter after reviewing some of the evidence.
The attorney also kept Gordon from responding to Shapley’s testimony that another FBI supervisory special agent questioned why Weiss wasn’t “asking for a special counsel in this investigation.”
The former G-man’s counsel cited “deliberate process privilege” to bar House Oversight Committee lawyers from pressing for answers about “information related to a status that could lead to a charge in a different district.”
On Friday, federal prosecutors moved to dismiss their case in Delaware to bring charges in another jurisdiction after having revealed in court that FARA charges were possible.
Gordon served in the FBI from 2002 to 2022, working as supervisory special agent for his last five years on a public corruption and financial crimes squad in Wilmington, Del.
He was part of the Hunter probe from February 2019, which two months later was joined onto a parallel IRS investigation begun in November 2018.
