Whistleblowers Show Merrick Garland And IRS Commissioner Lied To Congress About Hunter Biden, GOP Reps Say
Two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers implicated Attorney General Merrick Garland and IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel in perjury with their testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, two Republicans on the committee.
Gary Shapley and another whistleblower both testified before Ways and Means Committee attorneys for more than seven hours, Republican Reps. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma and Greg Murphy of North Carolina told. The members emphasized that the testimony implicates both Garland and IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel in lying to Congress about political interference in the Biden probe. Ways and Means voted Thursday in a closed-door hearing to release their transcripts.
Both congressmen emphasized the credibility of the whistleblowers, with Hern noting that they were questioned by both Republican and Democrat committee attorneys.
“Whistleblower One’s story was corroborated by Whistleblower Two,” the Oklahoman said. “The attorneys for the Democrats had the ability to ask any questions, any clarifications they wanted to and review the final transcript.”
“One individual came forward and laid out the full case of what’s going on. The second individual, through his attorney, asked Ways and Means to contact him and ask for testimony. So we didn’t seek these, they sought us,” Murphy added.
JUST IN: During an exclusive interview with CBS News, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley exposed the Department of Justice for interfering in the Hunter Biden criminal investigation.
Why is the ‘equal justice under the law’ crowd so quiet right now?
“When I took control of this… pic.twitter.com/If9MnTheE3
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 25, 2023
Shapley oversaw the agency’s tax investigation into Hunter Biden, which is expected to culminate in the president’s son pleading guilty to two misdemeanors. An investigator at the IRS for more than a decade, Shapley came forward to allege that the IRS violated normal investigatory protocols in ways that benefited Biden.
Shapley’s letter to Congress accuses Attorney General Merrick Garland of lying to Congress when he asserted that investigations into Biden would go on without political interference. Garland denied the charge. Werfel testified to Ways and Means in April and promised that whistleblowers would not be retaliated against. The second whistleblower alleged in his interview that he was retaliated against as early as October 2022.
Both whistleblowers noted one instance in which IRS agents sought to search a storage unit in northern Virginia belonging to Hunter Biden. When the agents reached out to Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf with their request for a warrant, she informed Biden’s defense team about their interest in the property.
“It was at this point for me that I started to believe that the attorneys with the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office and DOJ Tax were not acting appropriately, they were not following the appropriate investigative steps, and that we were not a part of the trajectory and/or the planning of the investigation as we normally are,” the unnamed whistleblower said.
Shapley referenced another incident in which DOJ officials declined to follow up on potentially incriminating messages between Hunter Biden and a Chinese businessman. The younger Biden messaged Henry Zhao, the chairman of Harvest Capital, about an unfulfilled business deal. Hunter Biden threatened Zhao, telling him, “I am sitting here with my father” who could help make sure Zhao “will regret not following my direction.”
Although IRS agents again wanted to execute a search, Wolf demurred, telling them that optics might make doing so inappropriate. DOJ attorneys “even wanted to remove Hunter Biden’s name from” legal documents, in a violation of protocol.
“This was clearly controlled by the IRS, the Department of Justice, and in our view, the boss of both, which is the White House,” Hern concluded.
