An IRS agent who blew the whistle about the politicized handling of the Hunter Biden investigation testified before a closed-door House panel Friday after he made his identity public earlier this week.
Lawyers for the IRS whistleblower told multiple outlets on Friday that “Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley testified for about six hours today to Democrat and Republican staff of the House Ways and Means Committee” and “both sides had equal opportunity to ask whatever questions they wanted, and Special Agent Shapley answered all of their questions.”
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The attorneys for the whistleblower on the Hunter Biden tax case said last month that their client, revealed to be Shapley, had documented examples of “preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting” the criminal tax case related to President Joe Biden’s son. The IRS supervisory special agent also disputed the “sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee.”
A source familiar with the whistleblower letter confirmed to the Washington Examiner that Attorney General Merrick Garland was the unnamed senior Biden official whose testimony before Congress is being challenged.
Garland has repeatedly vowed to ensure that the federal prosecutor in Delaware handling the Hunter Biden investigation is insulated from any political interference and has refused to appoint a special counsel. The investigation has been marred by allegations of political bias and retaliation against whistleblowers.
Garland said earlier this month that “I stand by my testimony” about U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s independence to investigate Hunter Biden criminally free from political interference despite the IRS whistleblower claims seemingly contradicting his sworn testimony.
“There were multiple steps that were slow-walked, were just completely not done, at the direction of the Department of Justice,” Shapley said when he gave his first public interview this week. “When I took control of this particular investigation, I immediately saw deviations from the normal process. It was way outside the norm of what I’ve experienced in the past.”
A second IRS whistleblower, a yet-unnamed case agent who has not spoken with Congress yet, has also alleged retaliation for raising concerns that Justice Department leadership was “acting inappropriately” on the investigation into Hunter Biden.
Both whistleblowers, along with the entire dozen-member team, were removed from the federal investigation into possible Hunter Biden tax violations in May, which the first whistleblower’s lawyers called “clearly retaliatory.”
In February 2021, President Joe Biden asked all Senate-confirmed U.S. attorneys appointed by former President Donald Trump to hand in their resignations, with Weiss, the federal prosecutor in Delaware, being a rare exception.
Hunter Biden revealed he was under federal investigation for his taxes shortly after the 2020 election, and the federal agents who have been investigating him reportedly believe they have unearthed enough evidence to charge him with crimes related to tax fraud and lying during his purchase of a handgun.
The bigger questions remain whether the DOJ has been considering more significant charges tied to money laundering or foreign lobbying.
Hunter Biden controversially held a lucrative position on the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma while his father was vice president, and he also pursued business deals in China and elsewhere during and after his father’s tenure, raking in millions.
The IRS whistleblower’s legal team had said last week that the IRS removed the entire investigative team in the Hunter Biden tax evasion investigation at the request of the Justice Department.
Shapley’s lawyers, Tristan Leavitt and Mark Lytle, the president of Empower Oversight and a partner at Nixon Peabody, respectively, fired off a letter to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel on Saturday in which they revealed a second whistleblower had also raised concerns about the Hunter Biden investigation and faced retaliation as a result.
Shapley has been retaliated against numerous times for making “protected disclosures” in 2021, 2022, and 2023, according to Leavitt.
Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), chairman of House Ways and Means, demanded an “urgent briefing and explanation” from Werfel about whistleblower protections last week.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told Garland on Thursday that his committee “is conducting oversight of the Department of Justice, including serious allegations of whistleblower retaliation” and gave him a June 8 deadline to hand over a host of records related to the alleged improper retaliation taken against the IRS whistleblowers.
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“The timing of the Department’s removal of the agent and investigative team raises serious concerns given that the investigation was the subject of the agent’s protected whistleblower disclosure. The Committee will not tolerate the Department’s retaliatory conduct against this or any other whistleblower,” Jordan told Garland on Thursday. “Federal law protects whistleblowers from retaliation. The Department’s alleged efforts to remove an IRS whistleblower from an ongoing investigation could be a retaliatory action prohibited under United States law.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) had sent an October letter to Garland, Weiss, and FBI Director Christopher Wray arguing that the FBI is in possession of “significant, impactful, and voluminous evidence” of “potential criminal conduct” by Hunter Biden related to his overseas business dealings with China and Ukraine.
