The White House won\u2019t respond and Attorney General Merrick Garland is playing defense after the release of sworn testimony from two IRS whistleblowers alleging special treatment in the agency\u2019s investigation of the president\u2019s son, Hunter Biden.
The House Ways and Means Committee voted Thursday to make public the transcripts of the IRS agents\u2019 testimonies\u2014two days after the Justice Department announced a plea agreement with Hunter Biden that would result in no prison time for failing to file income taxes and lying on a background check for a gun purchase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s nine things to know about what the IRS whistleblowers said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wnd1. \u2018WH\/DOJ Weren\u2019t Alerted?\u2019
Gary Shapley, a 14-year veteran of the IRS, gave his testimony May 26 to investigators for the House Ways and Means Committee.
and anonymous IRS agent also testified under oath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the Justice Department announced its plea deal with Hunter Biden on Tuesday, the Ways and Means Committee, in a party-line vote Thursday, decided to release the transcripts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a tweet Friday, The Heritage Foundation\u2019s Oversight Project raised the involvement of the White House and Department of Justice by asking: \u201cAre we to believe that the WH\/DOJ weren\u2019t alerted to the explosive whistleblower testimony before [the transcripts were] released?\u201d (The Heritage Foundation is the parent organization of The Daily Signal.)
If someone shared or leaked the IRS whistleblowers\u2019 testimonies before the House committee authorized their release, it could be a violation of federal law (under 26 U.S. Code \u00a7 6103) regarding the confidentiality and disclosure of tax returns and information on such returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The law states that \u201cno officer or employee of the United States, \u2026 shall disclose any return or return information obtained by him in any manner in connection with his service as such an officer or an employee or otherwise or under the provisions of this section.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to whistleblowers, IRS officials recommended that Hunter Biden be criminally charged with attempting to evade taxes, committing fraud, making false statements, willfully failing to file returns, and failing to provide information on over $8.3 million in income.
\u201cWhistleblowers describe how the Biden Justice Department intervened and overstepped in a campaign to protect the son of Joe Biden by delaying, divulging, and denying an ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden\u2019s alleged tax crimes,\u201d Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said in a public statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Daily Signal sought comment from spokespersons at the Justice Department and the White House Counsel\u2019s Office on their awareness of the testimony before announcement of the plea deal. Neither responded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Daily Signal also sought comment from the office of Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, to ask whether any Democrats on the committee shared information with the White House or Justice Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Neal\u2019s office did not respond to multiple phone and email inquiries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor example, in August 2020, we got the results back from an iCloud search warrant. Unlike the laptop [abandoned by Hunter Biden at a Delaware repair shop], these came to the investigative team from a third-party record keeper and included a set of messages,\u201d Shapley said.
The IRS supervisory agent went on to give an example:
Shapley also testified that at a September 2020 meeting, Assistant U.S. Attorney for Delaware Lesley Wolf said there was \u201cmore than enough probable cause for the physical search warrant there, but the question was whether the juice was worth the squeeze.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The prosecutor also said that \u201coptics were a driving factor in the decision on whether to execute a search warrant,\u201d the IRS agent testified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to comment further on this,\u201d Kirby said. \u201cI am not going to address this issue from this podium.\u201d
He soon departed quickly, wishing reporters a good weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later in the same briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to respond to reporters\u2019 questions about the IRS whistleblowers\u2019 testimonies. She instead referred reporters to the White House Counsel\u2019s Office\u2014which she said already has addressed the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI believe my colleague at the White House Counsel\u2019s Office has answered this question, has dealt with this, has made it very clear,\u201d Jean-Pierre told reporters. \u201cI just don\u2019t have anything to share outside of what my colleagues have shared. So I would refer you to him and the DOJ. I\u2019m not going to comment from here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Tuesday, when the Justice Department announced its plea deal with Hunter Biden, Ian Sams, a senior adviser to the counsel\u2019s office, issued a written statement for the senior Biden.
In it, Sams said: \u201cThe President and First Lady love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life. We will have no further comment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sams didn\u2019t respond to an inquiry Friday from The Daily Signal after the White House press briefing. The Daily Signal asked whether either the White House or the Justice Department was made aware of what the two IRS agents said pending announcement of the plea deal with the president\u2019s son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, it doesn\u2019t appear that the White House Counsel\u2019s Office has spoken to reporters about the IRS whistleblowers\u2019 allegations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked whether she stood by her earlier statement that Biden knew nothing about his son\u2019s various business dealings, Jean-Pierre said, \u201cNothing has changed.\u201d
Another reporter asked, referring to Hunter Biden\u2019s text to the Chinese business associate saying his father was right there: \u201cHave you spoken to the president about this? Have you asked him whether he was there with his son on July 30, 2017?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jean-Pierre answered: \u201cThis is not a conversation that I\u2019ve had with the president. Again, I would refer you to the White House counsel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden\u2019s press secretary also was asked whether the president would talk to the attorney general, Garland, about the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI cannot say if the president had a conversation with the attorney general about this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Weiss also sought special counsel status from the Justice Department in the spring of 2022, in order to conduct an independent inquiry. However, superiors also denied that request.
In the fall of 2022, Weiss requested to bring charges against the younger Biden in the Central District of California. The Justice Department denied that request in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFrom March 2022 through Oct. 7, 2022, I was under the impression that, based on AG Garland\u2019s testimony before Congress and statements by U.S. Attorney Weiss and prosecutors, that they were still deciding whether to charge 2014 and 2015 tax violations,\u201d Shapley testified to House investigators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHowever, I would later be told by United States Attorney Weiss that the D.C. U.S. Attorney would not allow U.S. Attorney Weiss to charge those years in his district. This resulted in United States Attorney Weiss requesting special counsel authority from Main DOJ to charge in the District of Columbia,\u201d the IRS supervisory agent testified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if he asked before or after the attorney general\u2019s April 26, 2022, statement, but Weiss said his request for that authority was denied and that he was told to follow DOJ\u2019s process,\u201d Shapley said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs I said at the outset, Mr. Weiss\u2014who was appointed by President Trump as the U.S. attorney in Delaware and assigned this matter during the previous administration\u2014would be permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any [federal] district in which he wanted to,\u201d Garland said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMr. Weiss has since sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee confirming that he had that authority,\u201d Garland continued. \u201cI don\u2019t know how it would be possible to block him from bringing a prosecution, given that he has this authority.\u201d
The attorney general also said at the press conference: \u201cThe only person with authority to make somebody a special counsel, or refuse to make somebody a special counsel, is the attorney general. Mr. Weiss never made that request to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere came a point in time [that] there were some bank reports out there that were going to get released,\u201d the anonymous whistleblower testified to House investigators, \u201cand they were going to include potentially the names of the investigators from the IRS and the FBI who received those bank reports.\u201d
\u201cSo with that being released in the public, we\u2019re like, \u2018It\u2019s going to out our investigation, so we need to come out and go overt with the tax case,\u201d the whistleblower continued. \u201cAnd I remember there were always times where we were always on an impending election cycle. It was always the election being brought up. In early 2020, it was the midterms. I think that Iowa was the very first one where we weren\u2019t sure what we were allowed to do or we weren\u2019t\u2014it was always \u2018Wait and see.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe were to the point where we needed to go out to all these prostitutes, because these were expensed [by the younger Biden],\u201d Shapley said, according to a redacted transcript. \u201cSo we had, it was probably four or five different weeks where, [REDACTED] would give the or\u2013I can\u2019t say that\u2013attachment for the document request and have it, you know, ready to go the next week.\u201d
Shapley referred to \u201coff-the-book employees.\u201d These included Arkansas resident Lunden Roberts, a former stripper who is the mother of one of Hunter Biden\u2019s daughters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere were multiple examples of prostitutes that were ordered [by the president\u2019s son] basically, and we have all the communications between that where he would pay for these prostitutes, would book them a flight where even the flight ticket showed their name. And then he expensed those,\u201d Shapley said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHowever, the night before, Dec. 7, 2020, I was informed that FBI headquarters had notified Secret Service headquarters and the transition team about the planned actions the following day,\u201d the IRS agent told investigators. \u201cThis essentially tipped off a group of people very close to President Biden and Hunter Biden and gave this group an opportunity to obstruct the approach on the witnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next morning, when he saw his FBI counterpart, Shapley testified, \u201che was clearly dejected about how our plan had been interfered with.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In another example, investigators had reason to look into a Northern Virginia storage unit where the younger Biden kept files, but his lawyers were informed ahead of time, the IRS whistleblower said.
\u201cOn Dec. 10, 2020, the prosecutorial team met again to discuss the next steps. One piece of information that came out of the day of action was that Hunter Biden vacated the Washington, D.C., office of Owasco. His documents all went into a storage unit in northern Virginia,\u201d Shapley told committee investigators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n