IRS whistleblower says he was barred from taking ‘certain investigative steps’ that could’ve led to President Biden

The IRS whistleblower accusing the Justice Department of interfering in the Hunter Biden tax fraud probe claimed in a new interview that his team was prevented from taking investigative measures that “could have led us to President Biden.”

IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley, who delivered bombshell testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee in May related to the five-year-long tax fraud investigation of first son Hunter Biden, made the assertion in a sit-down with CBS Evening News that aired Tuesday.

“There were certain investigative steps we weren’t allowed to take that could have led us to President Biden,” Shapley told CBS reporter Jim Axelrod.

Shapley emphasized in the interview that the investigative procedures the Justice Department purportedly blocked his team from completing were a necessary part of the probe. 

“We needed to take them,” he said.

The IRS agent noted that his team found evidence of several illegal business expenses during the course of the investigation, and suggested the evidence of alleged crimes perpetrated by Hunter likely would’ve quickly landed “any other person” in prison.

“If this was any other person, they likely would have already served their sentence,” Shapely said.

“There were personal expenses that were taken as business expenses, prostitutes, sex club memberships, hotel rooms for purported drug dealers,” he added. 

Shapley, who is still working for the IRS, indicated that from 2014 to 2019, Hunter was found to have owed $2.2 million in taxes to the federal government. 

The whistleblower further suggested that recent comments by Attorney General Merrick Garland about the “complete authority” Delaware US Attorney David Weiss had in investigating and charging Hunter don’t line up with what he witnessed as a member of the team probing the president’s 53-year-old son. 

The attorney general also testified under oath to Congress earlier this year that Weiss was empowered to bring charges outside of Delaware. 

“I documented exactly what happened. And it doesn’t seem to match what the attorney general or the US attorney are saying today,” Shapley said. 

Shapley told the House Ways and Means Committee that Weiss sought to bring federal charges against Hunter in the Central District of California and in Washington, DC, last year and was denied both times by Biden-appointed US attorneys Martin Estrada and Matthew Graves. 

“That was just shocking to me,” Shapley told CBS about Weiss allegedly saying he wasn’t the decider on filing charges.

He also told the panel that Weiss sought to be appointed special counsel in the case at least twice — including as recently as spring 2022 — but was turned down by the Biden Justice Department. A separate anonymous IRS whistleblower backed up this claim in testimony to the same committee in June. 

Last week, Garland claimed that Weiss “never made that request to me.” 

The Delaware US attorney’s office announced last week that Hunter has agreed to plead guilty to federal tax and firearms charges in a deal that’s expected to carry no prison time and leave his record free of felony convictions.

Several legal experts have decried the government’s charging decision in the Hunter case as a slap on the wrist.