Prosecutors working the Hunter Biden case agreed to bring felony charges against the president’s son only to have that decision stymied by President Biden’s operatives, two IRS whistleblowers told Congress on Wednesday as they publicly elaborated on their claims of malfeasance in the Justice Department’s investigation.
The case progressed to the point where David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware appointed to lead the Hunter Biden investigation, asked his counterpart in the District of Columbia to cooperate on bringing charges in the nation’s capital, the whistleblowers said.
Then everything changed. The Biden-appointed U.S. attorney in the District refused the case, and Mr. Weiss relinquished the felony charges to strike a plea agreement in which Mr. Biden would admit to two tax misdemeanors. The agreement calls for no prison time.
“If the Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss followed DOJ policy as he stated in his most recent letter, Hunter Biden should have been charged with a tax felony, and not only the tax misdemeanor charge,” said IRS Special Agent Joseph Ziegler. “We need to treat each taxpayer the same under the law.”
He and his supervisor, Special Agent Greg Shapley, also detailed their interest in pursuing further questions about President Biden. They said prosecutors shut down those inquiries because of concern about the “optics” of serving a search warrant on a guesthouse that Hunter Biden used on his father’s Delaware property.
They were also unable to obtain location data to verify whether the then-vice president was in the room with Hunter Biden when he used his father’s presence in a WhatsApp message to pressure a Chinese business associate.
“There were multiple instances in this investigation where there were references to the father of the subject, President Biden. In the course of any normal investigation, when the subject’s father is somehow related to the finances of the subject, in the normal course of any investigation, we would have to go and get that information,” Mr. Shapley told the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
He said prosecutors didn’t support those follow-ups.
The agents pointed to roughly $17 million in foreign income that Hunter Biden and associates earned from foreign sources from 2014 to 2019. Hunter Biden didn’t report some of the income on his tax returns. Republicans said the payments were curious because Hunter Biden offered no expertise or value to the companies other than the connection to his father.
“It’s pretty obvious that Hunter Biden’s only avenue for making money is influence over his father,” said Rep. Paul Gosar, Arizona Republican.
Democrats called the entire direction of the hearing an attempt to smear the president.
“One thing you will not hear today is any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee.
He cast the agents’ dispute as less a matter of prosecutorial malfeasance and more the usual give-and-take of the investigative and prosecutorial system.
Rep. Ro Khanna, California Democrat, said Mr. Shapley had a history of hard-charging investigations that clashed with tax prosecutors.
“This is why we have a prosecutorial system. You don’t get to decide,” he told Mr. Shapley.
Other Democrats on the committee said former President Donald Trump and his family had done as bad, or worse, than what the Hunter Biden investigation alleged.
Rep. Shontel Brown, Ohio Democrat, suggested racism is at play in IRS enforcement. He cited a study that indicated Black taxpayers were audited at significantly higher rates.
Hunter Biden is scheduled to appear next week in a federal court in Delaware, where he is slated to plead guilty to the two tax misdemeanors. He also will acknowledge evidence to charge him with a gun felony, though that charge will be held in abeyance. If he keeps a clean record while on probation for the tax charges, then the gun charge will be dropped.
Mr. Raskin said Mr. Biden has paid the taxes he owed, lessening his culpability.
The agents said prosecutors ran out the clock on tax year 2014, leaving roughly $125,000 in unpaid taxes that the government cannot force him to repay.
Rep. Michael Turner, Ohio Republican, suggested that President Biden “might want to wander down the hall at the White House and turn to his son and say, ‘Hunter Biden, why don’t you pay your taxes for 2014?’”
The two IRS agents said Hunter Biden could have been charged with at least three tax felonies.
They testified behind closed doors to the House Ways and Means Committee in May and June. The hearing Wednesday gave them a chance to make their case publicly.
It wasn’t just what the two men said but also who said it.
Mr. Shapley had been identified, but Mr. Ziegler was largely anonymous before Wednesday and was identified as “Mr. X” in previously released documents.
He said he is a gay Democrat who struggled with coming forward as a whistleblower and likened the decision to coming out as gay.
“I have heard from some that I am a traitor to the Democratic Party and that I am causing more division in our society,” he said. “I hope that I am an example to other LGBTQ people out there who are questioning doing the right thing at a potential cost to themselves and others. We should always do the right thing, no matter how painful the process might be.”
Democrats repeatedly praised the two men for devotion to their work and studiously avoided attacking their credibility while portraying the issues as normal disagreements inside a criminal investigation.
Because of taxpayer confidentiality rules, the two agents’ public testimony was limited. They largely had to stick to the confines of their previous closed-door testimony to the Ways and Means Committee. They were free to discuss that because the Ways and Means panel voted last month to make their testimony public.
The agents drilled down on the timeline of decisions. They said they thought they had built a good case and so did a series of prosecutors.
“Two assistant U.S. attorneys, two DOJ tax attorneys, DOJ Tax Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart Goldberg and [U.S. Attorney] Weiss all assisted on this investigation since its inception, knew all of the evidence, and agreed with the prosecution of felony charges in both D.C. and the Central District of California,” Mr. Shapley said.
Mr. Weiss was a holdover from the Trump administration.
Mr. Shapley said the involvement of Biden political appointees changed the course of the investigation.
The U.S. attorney in Washington balked at bringing the case. Mr. Weiss, who earlier had said he had the power to bring charges wherever he wanted, then told the investigators he was “not the deciding person on whether charges are filed,” Mr. Shapley said.
“The Justice Department allowed the president’s political appointees to weigh in on whether to charge the president’s son,” he said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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