Congressional Democrats are shrugging off an IRS whistleblower who wants to provide Congress with evidence that the Hunter Biden tax-crimes investigation has been thwarted for political reasons.
Democratic Party leaders are taking a wait-and-see approach to the complaint made public last week by the whistleblower’s lawyers alleging politically motivated, preferential treatment in an IRS criminal probe that Republican sources say involves President Biden’s son.
The IRS whistleblower also wants to provide Congress with evidence contradicting sworn testimony related to the Hunter Biden tax crimes probe that was provided to lawmakers by a senior political appointee, whom GOP sources identified to The Washington Times as Attorney General Merrick Garland.
A top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee downplayed the claim about Mr. Garland on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” one of only two Sunday talk shows that mentioned the IRS whistleblower letter that was made public days earlier.
“I am confident that Merrick Garland has conducted himself appropriately here,” said Sen. Chris Coons of Connecticut said when asked about the whistleblower’s allegation that a senior political appointee had provided a false statement in sworn congressional testimony.
Mr. Coons said the IRS agent should be provided whistleblower protections, but would go no further in lending credibility to his claims.
“I’ll remind you nothing’s been presented yet,” Mr. Coons said. “This person hasn’t come forward in any detail. If and when they do, if there’s any substance to it, I expect that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin, and the ranking member will ensure that they are fairly and appropriately treated.”
The Democratic Party’s skeptical and cautious reaction is far different than their response three years ago to an intelligence community whistleblower, whose complaint about a phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2019 led to Mr. Trump’s impeachment.
While Democrats immediately ramped up efforts to obtain that whistleblower’s complaint involving Mr. Trump, party leaders are acting with far less urgency to obtain the new whistleblower complaint about the IRS probe into Hunter Biden, even though it could suggest the administration is shielding the president’s son from criminal prosecution.
In a letter to House and Senate lawmakers, the whistleblower is described as a “career IRS criminal supervisory special agent who has been overseeing the ongoing and sensitive investigation of a high-profile, controversial subject since early 2020.”
The whistleblower claims to have evidence that at least two Biden Department of Justice appointees in U.S. Attorney’s Offices refuse to seek a tax indictment against the president’s son, a GOP aide told The Times.
Hunter Biden is the subject of an investigation that began in 2018 involving alleged tax crimes and information he provided on paperwork required to purchase a firearm. The probe has been led by Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a Trump appointee.
The whistleblower wants to report actions that “involve failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case, and detail examples of preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.”
Mr. Durbin, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, lumped in the IRS supervisor’s complaint with other grievances filed with congressional lawmakers.
“We take all whistleblower statements seriously, as we should,” Mr. Durbin, of Illinois, said of the IRS supervisor’s complaint. “Some turn out to be very important and some not.”
In 2019, Mr. Durbin showed no such ambiguity over media reports about an anonymous whistleblower who filed a complaint about then-President Trump’s behavior while on a call with Mr. Zelenskyy. In that case, a rough transcript of the call was made public several weeks after the whistleblower filed the complaint.
There were far more immediate details about the Trump whistleblower’s complaint, which accused the president of threatening to withhold critical military aid to Ukraine unless Mr. Zelenskyy agreed to investigate corruption charges involving Hunter Biden and then-candidate Joseph R. Biden.
Mr. Durbin called for Mr. Trump’s impeachment just days after the 2019 whistleblower complaint was leaked to the media and Mr. Durbin demanded the still-unseen complaint “be released to the appropriate congressional committees and evaluated according to the law.”
There appears to be no similar rush among Democrats to see the IRS whistleblower complaint, which has been filed with the inspectors general at both the IRS and Justice Department.
Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat who will be the first to oversee the matter in the Senate, has not indicated whether he has spoken to the whistleblower, asked to see his complaint, or whether Congress will hear from him.
“The Finance Committee has received a letter related to a federal investigation and majority staff have been in touch with their Republican counterparts on next steps,” said Finance Committee spokesman Ryan Carey. “Due to taxpayer privacy laws I’m unable to comment further.”
Mr. Wyden on Monday was pursuing an investigation into luxury travel and a beneficial real estate deal involving Justice Clarence Thomas and GOP mega donor Harlan Crow. Mr. Wyden publicly released a letter he sent to Mr. Crow, demanding a long list of information regarding luxury trips with Justice Thomas that he funded, along with the details of a real estate purchase from Justice Thomas that may he said have evaded tax laws.
Mr. Wyden has not issued a public comment about the IRS whistleblower.
The top Republican on the panel, Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, also declined through a spokeswoman to comment about the matter.
Other Republicans, however, have weighed in on the allegations, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, the top GOP lawmaker on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who has been investigating the Biden family’s business deals and potential influence peddling.
Mr. Graham called the Biden whistleblower allegations “a game changer,” and called on lawmakers “to embrace the idea that we’re gonna look long and hard in any accusation that the investigation was compromised, and I hope we can do that in a bipartisan fashion.”
House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican whose panel is probing the Biden family business deals, said the whistleblower letter, which was also addressed to him, raises questions about why the Hunter Biden tax case has dragged on for years.
“We’ve been wondering all along where the heck the DOJ and the IRS have been,” Mr. Comer said. “Now it appears the Biden administration may have been working overtime to prevent the Bidens from facing any consequences.”
In a statement to several media outlets, Hunter Biden’s lawyer accused the whistleblower of breaking the law by disclosing information about the case.
The Biden administration has declined to comment on the matter and referred all questions to the Justice Department.
“This is something for the Department of Justice, which is independent, and we have been very clear since the campaign that this is something that they need to speak to, and that’s why refer to you the Department of Justice. We are just not going to speak about it here,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “We are letting the Department of Justice handle this. That’s what an administration does when it believes in the rule of law.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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