House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) will partake in the House Oversight Committee’s Wednesday hearing with the two IRS whistleblowers who allege the Justice Department interfered with the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden.
Smith, who is not a member of the Oversight Committee, will be involved in the hearing, he told the Washington Examiner. When asked if anything new would be coming out of the hearing or if the whistleblowers would be reciting the same testimony they gave Ways and Means, Smith said, “People will want to watch the hearing.”
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“There’ll be a lot of information that Americans will want to know about,” Smith said. A spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee confirmed the Missouri Republican would participate.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sits on the House Oversight Committee, so he too will be involved in the hearing.
The two whistleblowers, IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley and an anonymous whistleblower referred to as “whistleblower x,” first testified to the Ways and Means Committee, which is the committee of jurisdiction. They alleged that the DOJ interfered in Biden’s criminal investigation by blocking David Weiss, the lead U.S. attorney on the case, from bringing charges in the jurisdiction of his choice and denied his request for special counsel status.
The identity of “whistleblower x” will be unveiled at the hearing on Wednesday.
Weiss and Attorney General Merrick Garland have denied the allegations.
The whistleblowers also unveiled a litany of new evidence related to Biden, including text messages with a Chinese business associate in which he invoked his father’s name in order to get money from the associate. Biden using his father’s name led to millions being deposited into his account.
The whistleblowers also testified that they had been retaliated against by the IRS for their decision to make protected disclosures to Congress.
In light of the testimony, the House Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means committees all started working together to further investigate the allegations of misconduct at the DOJ and the IRS. In early July, the three committees requested transcribed interviews with more than 13 employees of the IRS, the DOJ, and the Secret Service in order to get a better understanding of just how serious the alleged interference in the investigation was.
Throughout the course of the investigations, Biden’s legal team has sought to pour cold water on the investigations by attempting to discredit the whistleblowers and Smith himself.
On June 30, Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, sent a 10-page letter to Smith trying to discredit the whistleblowers and saying Smith was feeding “the misinformation campaign to harm our client, Hunter Biden, as a vehicle to attack his father.”
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“They’re the same attorneys that the whistleblower stated in their 15-hour testimony that said that they told Department of Justice prosecutors that if they brought charges on the president’s son, they would be facing career suicide,” Smith said. “That’s the type of individuals you’re dealing with.”
The hearing with the IRS whistleblowers will take place at 1 p.m. on Wednesday.
