IRS supervisory criminal investigator-turned-whistleblower Gary Shapley appeared before the US House Ways and Means Committee on May 26. He provided seven bombshell documents totaling 23 pages to confirm his claims regarding the apparent "preferential treatment" of the first son tax crimes probe.
All in all, Shapley testified for about six hours and answered questions from Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
In addition to detailing the evidence and predicate for the IRS investigation into Hunter Biden, the documents presented by the agent indicated that starting from at least 2020, DoJ officials made repeated attempts to thwart and interfere with his investigation. As per Shapley, both IRS and FBI agents had been concerned by the DoJ's interference. The IRS whistleblower supervised the tax probe since January 2020.
"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," Shapley told CBS News. "There were multiple steps that were slow-walked – were just completely not done – at the direction of the Department of Justice."
Shapley, a 14-year IRS veteran, broke cover earlier this week. Previously, his identity was concealed under whistleblower protections.
In fact, his "protected disclosures" began in the summer of 2020: at that time he began to note irregularities in how the DoJ was handling the case but no reaction followed. In October 2022 Shapley met with Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, responsible for the Hunter Biden investigation, and informed him about his concerns regarding the handling of the case. Following this, Shapley and his IRS team were no longer invited to the prosecutorial team meetings on the probe.
In April 2023, the IRS whistleblower informed US lawmakers about apparent violations during the Hunter Biden tax crimes investigation, pointing the finger at US federal prosecutors for meddling in the probe and allegedly trying to shield the first son. In response, the House Ways and Means Committee "freed" Shapley and his lawyers from 6103 tax privacy obligations so that they could provide all the evidence concerning Hunter Biden to the US Congress for further examination.
However, in the aftermath of these developments, the IRS veteran and his 12 subordinates were abruptly expelled from the probe. Shapley's subordinate tried to find out what was behind the decision - only to be intimidated by IRS officials.
US lawmakers sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel demanding clarifications on what seemed to be an act of retaliation against IRS whistleblowers. On May 17, Werfel responded that he had nothing to do with the removal of Shapley's team from the Hunter Biden probe, confirming that it was the Department of Justice, who issued such orders.
On May 25, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland urging him to explain why the IRS whistleblower team was suspended from the probe and warning that the committee would not tolerate the DoJ's "retaliatory conduct against this or any other whistleblower."
"The department’s alleged efforts to remove an IRS whistleblower from an ongoing investigation could be a retaliatory action prohibited under United States law," Jordan stressed.
The controversy surrounding the Hunter Biden tax probe, which was launched in 2018, is not the only example of an apparent political cover-up involving the first son. Previously, FBI agents facilitated the suppression of the New York Post's Hunter "laptop from hell" story in October 2020 as his father, Joe Biden, ran for the presidency, as per Elon Musk's bombshell Twitter Files.
Moreover, a whopping 51 ex-top intelligence officials then branded damning materials originating from Hunter's laptop as "Russian disinformation" at the request of then-Biden campaign top operative Antony Blinken.
Having taken control of the House, Republican lawmakers pledged to get to the bottom of Hunter Biden's tax crimes, suspecting influence peddling schemes with foreign powers and apparent involvement of Joe Biden in his son's "business."