House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith has just released the committee’s transcribed interview with IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and an unidentified colleague. The interviews took place on May 26 and June 1. Redacted interview transcripts are accessible online here at the bottom of Smith’s press release.
Smith’s press release provides this quote:
Whistleblowers 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’s alleged tax crimes. The testimony shows tactics used by the Justice Department to delay the investigation long enough to reach the statute of limitations, evidence they divulged sensitive actions by the investigative team to Biden’s attorneys, and denied requests by the U.S. Attorney to bring charges against Biden.
IRS employees who blew the whistle on this abuse were retaliated against, despite a commitment IRS Commissioner Werfel made before the Ways and Means Committee to uphold their legal protections. They were removed from this investigation after they responsibly worked through the chain of command to raise these concerns.
Chairman Smith’s Twitter feed serves up several highlights including this one.
Their warnings fell on deaf ears.
In August 2020, a search warrant uncovered a text between Hunter and Henry Zhao, an executive at a Chinese company that paid Hunter $100,000.
The text mentioned Joe Biden repeatedly.
Investigators were not allowed to verify the information. pic.twitter.com/wpqmrkppz1
— Rep. Jason Smith (@RepJasonSmith) June 22, 2023
Here is C-SPAN’s video of the 15-minute press conference announcing release of the transcripts. This is worth your time.
The vote to release the transcripts was along party lines. At some point the truth threatens to escape. I will only add that anyone who doesn’t think it makes a difference to have a Republican majority in the House is not firing on all cylinders.
Quotable quote (from Shapley transcript): “There were also potential FARA issues relating to 2014 and 2015. The purposeful exclusion of the 2014 and 2015 years sanitized the most substantive criminal conduct and concealed material facts. Hunter Biden still has not reported approximately $400,000 in income from Burisma and has not paid the tax due and owing of around $125,000 even after being told multiple times by his partner, Eric Schwerin, that he had to amend his 2014 return to report that income.”
One more: “Two weeks later, I learned how defense counsel felt about the case when prosecutors told us on a pros team call that Chris Clark, Hunter Biden’s counsel from Latham and Watkins, told them that if they charge Hunter Biden, they would be committing ‘career suicide,’ end quote.”
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