We’ve heard about the IRS whistleblower in the joint Justice Department-IRS investigation of Hunter Biden. Byron York put it this way in his column on what he calls the “brewing scandal.” I would describe it as the obvious suppression of the Hunter Biden case by the Department of Justice:
The whistleblower was a career IRS criminal supervisory special agent who, according to his lawyer, could reveal “clear conflicts of interest” in the Biden investigation as well as “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 whistleblower came out this week. His name is Gary Shapley. He is a supervisory special agent with the IRS’s criminal investigations unit. He sat for an interview with CBS News reporter Jim Axelrod on Tuesday.
The related CBS News story relates that Shapley was assigned to a “sensitive” investigation in January 2020, and within months, grew concerned about how the Justice Department was handling the investigation. Shapley hasn’t specifically tagged the Hunter Biden case as the source of Shapley’s concern, but “CBS News has learned that [it] was the Hunter Biden probe. Shapley says he began documenting his concerns around June 2020.”
Last week Shapley’s attorneys informed Congress that he and his staff had been removed from the investigation “at the request of the Department of Justice.” He claims he’s faced retaliation from IRS leadership. IRS Commission Danny Werfel denies wrongdoing — wrongdoing attributable to him, anyway.
Werfel responded to a congressional inquiry this week: “The IRS whistleblower you reference alleges that the change in their work assignment came at the direction of the Department of Justice. As a general matter and not in reference to any specific case, I believe it is important to emphasize that in any matter involving federal judicial proceedings, the IRS follows the direction of the Justice Department.” As Bob Dylan might put it: It ain’t him, babe.
Werfel’s response should amplify the “brewing scandal.” It should bring it to a boil. He is scheduled to testify before a closed-door meeting of the House Ways and Means Committee today.
Jonathan Turley comments on Shapley’s emergence in the blunt New York Post column “Reluctant IRS whistleblower will find supine media and the Dems are as reluctant to take him seriously.” The Byron York column linked above discusses the case of a second IRS whistleblower (this one with “hands-on, close involvement, running the Hunter investigation for more than five years”). Byron resorts to something like comic understatement: “Something is going on here.”
It’s obvious what is going on here. It’s so obvious that they are rubbing our noses in it. I have posted video of the CBS News segment on Shapley below.
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