Federal officials protect President Biden’s son by ‘delaying, exposing and denying’ the investigation
The House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday released testimony from two IRS whistleblowers alleging that the Justice Department, FBI, and IRS interfered in the tax evasion investigation into Hunter Biden.
Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo. According to the statement, the testimony “describes misconduct and government abuse at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the investigation of Hunter Biden.”
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“The allegations represent a steady stream of uneven enforcement of tax law; Justice Department interference in the form of delays, disclosures, and denials in the investigation of tax crimes committed by the president’s son; and finally, retaliation against IRS employees who blew the whistle on misconduct,” the committee said Thursday.
“Whistleblowers describe how the Biden Justice Department interfered with and overrode the campaign to protect Joe Biden’s son by delaying, disclosing, and denying the ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged tax crimes,” Smith said.
One whistleblower, IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley Jr., said the decisions in the case appeared to be “politically influenced,” according to testimony released by the committee.
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“Regardless of the motivations, decisions were made at every stage that had an impact that benefited those under investigation,” Shapley said.
“These decisions include slow-moving investigative actions, allowing enforcement actions to be carried out now, limiting the range of questions investigators can ask witnesses, misleading investigators on charging authority, delaying any and all actions months before an election, ensuring investigations are not well underway. The policy memorandum to mandate a pause Before. These are just a few examples,” he added.
Shapley, who oversaw the IRS investigation into the president’s son, said the IRS obtained a July 30, 2017 WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, a former Chinese Communist Party official and CEO of the Harvest Fund, the New York Post previously reported. management
“I’m sitting here with my father and we want to understand why the commitment that was made has not been fulfilled. I want to fix this before it gets out of hand and I want to fix this now tonight,” Biden wrote. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I’ll make sure of my ability to hold on to the person sitting next to me and everyone he knows forever. With a grudge that you’ll regret not following my direction. I’m here with my father. Waiting for the call.”
Shapley testified that exchanges such as the message “We made it clear that we needed to search the guest house at the Bidens’ Delaware residence where Hunter Biden had stayed for some time.”
However, Shapley testified that an assistant United States attorney in Delaware, Leslie Wolff, told him that “optics was a driving factor in the decision whether to execute a search warrant.”
“She said a lot of the evidence in our investigation was found at former Vice President Biden’s guest house, but there was no way we could approve that,” Shapley testified.
The news comes days after the Justice Department announced that Hunter Biden would plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of willfully failing to pay federal income taxes, as part of a deal expected to keep him out of prison. The younger Biden agreed to enter into an early diversion agreement on a separate charge of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user or addict of a controlled substance.
In response to the committee’s release, the Justice Department said in a statement on the Biden case:
“As both the Attorney General and U.S. Attorney David Weiss have said, U.S. Attorney Weiss has full authority over the matter, including the responsibility to decide where, when, and whether to file charges as he sees fit. He needs no further authorization to do so. . . . Related questions should be directed to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Delaware.”