In a letter to the IRS commissioner that The Federalist got exclusively, Senator Chuck Grassley accused the Justice Department and IRS of trying to discredit the whistleblowers who revealed favoritism and misconduct in the Hunter Biden investigation. He says the court filing in Hunter Biden's tax evasion case backs up his claims and that Special Counsel David Weiss should never have been appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Senator Grassley sent a letter to the IRS commissioner on Thursday, expressing worry about the agency's retaliation against IRS whistleblowers, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler. Grassley's letter explained that Shapley and Ziegler had made protected disclosures to IRS officials about government misconduct in the Hunter Biden investigation. After the House Ways and Means Committee got the whistleblowers' charges and voted to release related documents and testimony, the details of the charges became public.
Among other things, the whistleblowers revealed to the House Ways and Means Committee that the investigation into Hunter Biden had been hindered in various ways: Requests for search warrants and subpoenas were denied improperly, investigators were limited in who they could question and what about, and someone warned the Biden transition team, stopping agents from successfully questioning nearly a dozen witnesses.
The whistleblowers also said that in early August 2022, they had advised in a 99-page memo that Hunter Biden should face felony and misdemeanor charges. However, prosecutors let the statute of limitations expire on the most serious felony charges because the DOJ wouldn't give U.S. Attorney Weiss the authority to charge Hunter Biden in D.C. or California, and the U.S. attorneys appointed by Biden in those districts refused to bring charges.
Instead, Weiss's office offered Hunter Biden a lenient plea deal for a misdemeanor. After that deal collapsed following a judge's questions about the deal's fairness, Garland made Weiss special counsel in August 2023. named Weiss finally had the needed authority to bring charges in other federal districts, and he did, charging Hunter Biden with multiple tax offenses, including tax evasion, in the Central District of California on Dec. 7, 2023. brought There were also felony tax charges in California, in addition to felony gun charges Weiss
against Biden in Delaware.
Hunter Biden’s attorneys went into overdrive to try and discredit these brave whistleblowers. A June 27, 2023, New York Times article reported that Hunter Biden’s lawyers asserted to the Justice Department that Shapley broke federal laws by making legally protected whistleblower disclosures to Congress concerning the mishandling of the investigation into their client. Days after that article, on June 30, 2023, Hunter Biden’s attorney sent a letter to House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith amazingly alleging that Shapley and Zeigler’s legally protected whistleblower disclosures before Congress were unlawful.
Hunter Biden’s well-off lawyers are aggressively defending him, even attacking the whistleblowers, according to Grassley’s letter. A recent filing in a California tax case suggests that Weiss and the IRS are working together. The senator is concerned that the DOJ and FBI may be investigating Shapley and Ziegler for making legally protected disclosures.
Weiss’s response to Hunter Biden’s motion to dismiss the tax charges raised concern. Hunter argued that Shapley and Ziegler disclosed his confidential tax information, and that such conduct should prevent the special counsel from pursuing the tax charges.
Weiss’s response emphasized that there was no evidence linking the alleged outrageous government conduct to the tax charges. The special counsel noted that the indictment came after Shapley and Ziegler were removed from the Hunter Biden investigation.
Weiss claimed that Hunter’s repeated assertions that the IRS took no action regarding Shapley and Ziegler’s decision to make public statements were not true. He cited a declaration filed under seal that supposedly establishes the IRS taking steps to address their conduct.
The special counsel’s response was filed along with an application to seal the declaration and two other exhibits. According to Weiss, these exhibits relate to potential ongoing investigations that are unrelated to Hunter Biden.
Weiss's description of the exhibits suggests that Shapley and Ziegler are the subjects of one or more investigations. Grassley criticized the Justice Department for publicly revealing a 'potential ongoing investigation' while arguing that it is sensitive information.
Grassley accused the Justice Department and IRS of using public and sealed court documents to tarnish the whistleblowers who exposed their misconduct. He also pointed out the conflict of interest in Weiss being involved in such an investigation, as he would be investigating and potentially prosecuting the whistleblowers who disclosed misconduct by him.
Grassley, a staunch supporter of whistleblowers, asked the IRS to confirm if Shapley and Ziegler were the subject of an ongoing investigation, and if so, why the IRS chief counsel shared that information with the DOJ despite the conflicts of interest among the whistleblowers, Weiss, and the DOJ.
Tristan Leavitt, the president of Empower Oversight, said to The Federalist that they are grateful for Congress making sure the DOJ is clear about whether the government is conducting a retaliatory investigation of the IRS whistleblowers.
However, Leavitt emphasized that the conflict of interest goes beyond the criminal case against Hunter Biden. Referring to a letter Empower Oversight sent Garland last week, Leavitt told The Federalist that the DOJ’s conflicts of interest also apply to “Hunter Biden’s baseless lawsuit accusing the IRS whistleblowers of crimes.” The DOJ has not yet argued that the IRS agents’ statements were protected whistleblower disclosures in defending Hunter Biden’s separate civil suit against the IRS, which seeks to hold the federal agency accountable for Shapley and Ziegler’s disclosures.
Grassley's request for answers from the IRS regarding the DOJ’s conflict of interest in the criminal case against Hunter Biden may help shed light on the Biden administration’s hostility toward the whistleblowers, which also extends to Hunter Biden’s civil case against the government. As Shapley and Ziegler’s attorney told The Federalist, “DOJ’s interests align too closely with Hunter Biden’s for these actors to be impartial.” This is why naming Weiss as special counsel made no sense.
This article has been updated since it was first published.
