IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley testified to Congress behind closed doors Friday about an alleged Justice Department cover-up to protect Hunter Biden during a criminal investigation.
The GOP-controlled House Ways and Means Committee led the panel of Republican and Democratic staffers who were given equal time to question Mr. Shapley about his allegations that prosecutors are dragging their feet over the now 5-year-old case targeting President Biden’s son.
Neither side released statements about the exchanges with Mr. Shapley following his 6-hour testimony. But Mr. Shapley went public with his allegations in a CBS News interview on Wednesday.
“There were multiple steps that were slow-walked — were just completely not done — at the direction of the Department of Justice,” Mr. Shapley said. “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.”
Hunter Biden has been under federal investigation for several years for tax crimes, suspicious activity involving global business dealings and for lying on a federal form when he purchased a gun.
The 14-year IRS veteran told the outlet he began documenting his trepidations about the Hunter Biden investigation five months after being assigned to the high-profile case in June 2020.
Mr. Shapley said he noticed that “each and every time” the investigation deviated from standard procedures, Hunter Biden benefited.
“It just got to that point where that switch was turned on. And I just couldn’t silence my conscience anymore,” he said. “For a couple of years, we’d been noticing these deviations in the investigative process. And I just couldn’t, you know, fathom that DOJ might be acting unethically on this.”
He likely told congressional investigators more than he revealed in the news interview. The IRS official turned whistleblower cannot publicly discuss specifics about the probe due to tax privacy laws. However, disclosures to Congress are legally protected.
In October 2022, Mr. Shapley decided it was time to report his findings. He become a whistleblower after a “charged meeting” with the Department of Justice and his team of 12 subordinates being transferred off of the case.
“It was my red-line meeting,” he said.
IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel has denied to Congress that he retaliated by ejecting Mr. Shapley’s team from the probe.
“I want to state unequivocally that I have not intervened — and will not intervene — in any way that would impact the status of any whistleblower,” Mr. Werfel said in a letter to Congress.
President Biden has steadfastly defended his son against various allegations of wrongdoing. The White House has not addressed the whistleblower allegations other than saying it is a matter for the Justice Department.
Before the closed-door testimony, a GOP aide told The Washington Times that Mr. Shapley has evidence that at least two of President Biden’s appointees to the U.S. Attorney’s Offices refuse to seek a tax indictment against Hunter Biden.
A second IRS whistleblower, a subordinate of Mr. Shapley’s and the primary case agent on the Hunter Biden investigation, surfaced in April. Although he is not currently scheduled to testify before lawmakers, he wrote in an email to congressional investigators: “We have been saying for some time [prosecutors have] been acting inappropriately.”
On April 19, the second whistleblower notified Congress in a letter through his attorney Mark Lyttle that there was evidence the president’s son received “preferential treatment” since the launch of the investigation.
In his written whistleblower disclosure to Congress, Mr. Shapley described Biden administration actions that contradict sworn testimony to Congress by an unnamed senior political 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.”
The letter was sent to multiple House and Senate lawmakers in both parties, including Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who co-chairs the Whistleblower Protection Caucus and is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee that oversees the IRS.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who has been investigating the Biden family business deals for several years, told The Times this is not the first complaint that Democrats are mishandling the investigation into Hunter Biden.
Mr. Johnson said a different whistleblower told his office the U.S. Attorney in Delaware tasked with investigating Hunter Biden lacked sufficient resources to conduct a proper investigation.
House Republicans continue to search hundreds of bank records related to the Biden family’s lucrative business deals, many of them orchestrated by Hunter Biden, involving Russia, Ukraine, China and other countries.
Correction: Mr. Shapley spoke to lawmakers’ staffers.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.