A pair of IRS whistleblowers exposed new details about how the Department of Justice slow-walked elements of the Hunter Biden investigation, as well as how the DOJ has continued to avoid transparency about the politically charged investigation.
Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, two top IRS agents, faced hours of questioning about their years on the Hunter Biden investigation during a hearing before the House Oversight Committee and members of the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday.
LAROSE LEADS REPUBLICANS IN RACE TO CHALLENGE OHIO SEN. SHERROD BROWN, POLL SAYS
Ziegler had remained anonymous in the weeks before the hearing, revealing his identity just before his first public appearance.
Their testimony involved a closer look at how Justice Department officials suppressed investigative steps the IRS wanted to take, such as blocking access to the full contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, stopping the IRS from interviewing Hunter Biden himself, and preventing investigators from asking witnesses about messages that mentioned President Joe Biden.
Here are six takeaways from the hearing.
WEISS’S CREDIBILITY ON THE LINE
Public and private statements by David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware, came under the microscope throughout the hearing.
The authority Weiss did nor did not have to pursue the Hunter Biden case is at the heart of the debate over how the DOJ handled the investigation, and neither Weiss himself nor the Justice Department have satisfactorily explained why the debate exists in the first place.
Ziegler testified that Weiss was “constantly hamstrung, limited, and marginalized by DOJ officials, as well as other U.S. attorneys.”
“Weiss first said he can charge anywhere, then admitted he was geographically limited,” Ziegler said.
Weiss’s seemingly contradictory statements about his ability to bring charges against Hunter Biden have deepened scrutiny of his role in the case.
Appointed by then-President Donald Trump, Biden opted to leave Weiss in his post to avoid the appearance of bias in the investigation of his son. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said repeatedly that Weiss has total independence in the investigation and that Weiss would receive approval for any charging decision he wanted to make.
Weiss said in a June 30 letter to Congress that “my charging ability is geographically limited to my home district,” a statement that appeared to confirm the whistleblowers’ claims that two Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys had blocked felony charges for Hunter Biden.
Weiss said in another letter to Congress just days later that he had ultimate authority over charging Hunter Biden, which seemed to contradict his previous acknowledgment of the limitations he faced.
Weiss’s private statements at an Oct. 7, 2022, meeting cast further doubt on his credibility.
At that meeting, attended by at least seven people, including Shapley, Weiss said he wanted to charge Hunter Biden in Washington, D.C., but was denied authority by the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney in charge of the district.
Weiss also told meeting attendees that he’d sought special counsel status from the Justice Department but was told no.
He later said in a letter to Congress that he did not request special counsel status, a designation that could have required him to step down from his post as U.S. attorney and that would have required Garland’s sign-off, but acknowledged that he did request special attorney status.
PLEA DEAL SCRUTINIZED
IRS whistleblowers spoke about the leniency of the plea deal Hunter Biden recently received from Weiss’s office, which a judge is set to review next week.
The whistleblower noted that Hunter Biden did not pay any taxes on income he received in 2014 from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. They testified that he listed sex club memberships and payments to prostitutes as business write-offs on his tax returns.
But Weiss brought only misdemeanor charges against Hunter Biden, and the charges involved only a failure to pay taxes for two years — not the willful evasion of taxes that, the whistleblowers said, investigators had plenty of evidence to prove.
“I thought the felony charges were well-supported,” Ziegler testified.
The whistleblowers testified that Weiss privately agreed that IRS investigators had collected enough evidence to back up felony charges for tax crimes for several more years than what’s included in the plea deal.
That evidence could deepen controversy around the plea deal Hunter Biden is expected to finalize in court on Wednesday.
EVIDENCE IN PLAIN SIGHT
The whistleblowers testified to the strength of evidence that Hunter Biden committed more serious tax crimes than what he’s pleaded guilty to despite efforts from the Justice Department to stop investigators from collecting some evidence.
Ziegler testified that Hunter Biden essentially laid out a road map for prosecutors in parts of his 2021 memoir, but the Justice Department did not act on it.
He cited a passage of the book in which Hunter Biden admitted to spending weeks “holed up” in the Chateau Marmont learning to cook crack cocaine. On his tax returns, Ziegler testified, the lengthy Chateau Marmont stay was written off as a business expense.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) stirred controversy when she held up explicit pictures of women Hunter Biden had allegedly paid for sex. Payments to those women were written off as business expenses as well.
The IRS whistleblowers repeatedly mentioned Hunter Biden’s work for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Beyond the fact that Hunter Biden did not pay taxes on the $83,000 per month he earned from the company, his highly publicized work for the company did not seem to trigger any interest in whether he had properly registered as a foreign agent under lobbying laws.
BATTLE OVER BIDEN ATTORNEYS
Shapley testified about the seeming conflict of interest involved in two Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys being given the final say over whether the president’s son should face felony charges.
E. Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney in the Central District of California, and Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., both denied Weiss the ability to bring felony charges in their jurisdictions, according to the whistleblowers.
“That no charges were brought in those two districts tells you everything you need to know,” Shapley testified on Wednesday.
Shapley said the IRS investigative team had compiled enough evidence for charges against Hunter Biden for the 2016-2019 tax years, which needed to be charged in the Central District of California, but for some reason, the Justice Department slowed the process of reaching out to the California U.S. attorney for months.
Prosecutors did not present their case to the Central District of California’s U.S. attorney’s office until days after Estrada was confirmed by Congress in September 2022, Shapley said. The answer, after all that time, was still no.
The House Judiciary Committee has already asked for more information from Estrada and Graves about whether they blocked Weiss from bringing charges in their respective districts; so far, neither has responded.
A FAMILY AFFAIR
Investigators wanted to explore the justification for payments from foreign sources to other members of the Biden family but were largely rebuffed, the whistleblowers said.
President Joe Biden’s grandchildren were among the recipients of unexplained payments uncovered by investigators, the whistleblowers testified.
“I don’t know the reason. I don’t know what’s behind any of these payments,” Ziegler said.
The IRS whistleblowers also testified to the fact that they could not follow up on any leads that pointed back to Joe Biden.
“I have never been told that we couldn’t approach someone to interview them as a part of an investigation,” Ziegler said on Wednesday. “In this case, we needed to talk to witnesses related to things that were deducted on the tax return, and in this case, it was the adult children that we needed to talk to.”
The House Oversight Committee had previously published evidence from bank records that numerous members of the Biden family, including the president’s brother and his late son’s widow, received payments from the foreign income Hunter Biden was earning from his consulting work.
The justification for payments that went beyond Hunter Biden, as well as messages that indicated other payments were intended for Joe Biden, have never been explained, and the IRS whistleblowers testified that investigators were not permitted to find out.
SPECIAL COUNSEL QUESTION
House Republicans and the IRS whistleblowers seemed united in their view that the Justice Department should appoint a special counsel to look into the increasingly messy Hunter Biden-related matter.
They cited the obfuscation of Justice Department leaders, the challenges faced by Weiss, and the highly sensitive nature of the investigation as reasons why a special counsel should take over.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, had previously expressed skepticism of appointing a special counsel because doing so could give the Biden administration the ability to avoid handing over documents sought by congressional investigators by pointing to an ongoing special counsel investigation.
But the whistleblowers laid out a compelling case for an independent prosecutor in charge of the investigation – including the fact that, thanks to Justice Department stonewalling, the statute of limitations has already expired for some of the alleged crimes Hunter Biden committed.