House Republican impeachment leaders sound alarm on possible DOJ probe of IRS whistleblowers
Leaders of the House Republican impeachment inquiry into President Biden fired off letters Tuesday to officials at the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service, demanding answers about “serious allegations of whistleblower retaliation” targeting two IRS agents who have accused the agencies of mishandling a five-year investigation into the president’s son Hunter.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) revealed in the letters that the IRS whistleblowers may be under federal investigation themselves.
IRS supervisory special agent Gary Shapley and special agent Joseph Ziegler had lawfully made protected disclosures to Congress last year about federal prosecutors covering up damning evidence gathered during the Hunter Biden probe, according to the committee leaders.
“Any and all attempts to intimidate or retaliate against Mr. Shapley and Mr. Ziegler for their protected disclosures to Congress must stop,” they wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland, IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel and special counsel David Weiss.
The impeachment investigators pointed out that Weiss asked for a federal judge to seal a March 11 court filing that revealed “a potential ongoing investigation” by the special counsel’s office connected to Hunter’s case.
“The redacted portion of the Department’s brief is in a paragraph about guidance from the IRS on whistleblowing options distributed to IRS employees, ‘including Shapley and Ziegler,’ suggesting that the whistleblowers may be subjects of the purported ongoing investigation and that the IRS may be involved in it,” they said.
Comer, Jordan and Smith demanded that Weiss turn over an unredacted version of the brief and asked Garland and Werfel to hand in all records potentially relating to an internal investigation of the whistleblowers.
The filings, the Republicans say, would shed light on the degree to which the DOJ and IRS have been involved in an “intimidation campaign” waged by Hunter’s defense attorney Abbe Lowell, who has accused Shapley and Zeigler in earlier court filings of “outrageous misconduct” for disclosing some of the evidence from their tax investigation.
Lowell and the first son’s former defense lawyer Chris Clark had also previously written letters to Justice Department officials that called for an investigation of the whistleblowers’ conduct.
Last year, Shapley and Ziegler testified to Congress that Weiss was initially barred from charging Hunter — and they had been blocked from interviewing first family members or pursuing lines of questioning that could lead to Joe Biden.
They also claimed the Justice Department tipped off Hunter Biden’s attorneys about a planned search of the first son’s storage locker that may have contained evidence — and that DOJ personnel sabotaged a planned in-person interview of the president’s son in late 2020.
The alarming allegations of political interference, which were first made during closed-door interviews with the House Ways and Means Committee, are at the center of House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Biden, 81.
Hunter Biden initially entered into a probation-only plea agreement with Weiss’ office for alleged tax and gun crimes, but his legal team walked away from the “sweetheart” deal, as critics called it, last July over concerns it would not shield the first son from future prosecutions.
Prosecutors for Weiss, then the Delaware US attorney, revealed in a court hearing that month that Hunter was still the target of an ongoing investigation — potentially for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act — causing Clark to declare the plea agreement “null and void.”
Following the collapse of the plea deal, Garland elevated Weiss to special counsel, and the Delaware prosecutor indicted Hunter Biden in September 2023 on three counts of lying about his crack cocaine use on a background check form when purchasing a gun in 2018.
The special counsel also indicted Hunter, 54, in December on nine counts — including three felonies — of evading $1.4 million in tax payments and filing false returns with the IRS between 2016 and 2019.
Lowell earlier this year filed eight motions to dismiss the case, arguing Weiss had caved to political pressure — spurred on by the improper leaks from the IRS whistleblowers — in his “selective and vindictive” prosecution of the first son.
On Monday, Los Angeles US District Judge Mark Scarsi rejected all those motions, and Hunter Biden is scheduled to head to trial on June 20 in the tax case. He is also set to stand trial on June 3 on the gun charges.
Weiss’ office declined to comment. Reps for the DOJ and IRS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
