{"id":4464,"date":"2023-07-20T11:48:45","date_gmt":"2023-07-20T16:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/?p=4464"},"modified":"2023-07-20T11:48:46","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T16:48:46","slug":"irs-whistleblowers-allege-special-treatment-for-hunter-biden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/?p=4464","title":{"rendered":"IRS whistleblowers allege special treatment for Hunter Biden"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>At one point in the hearing, Marjorie Taylor Greene produced stills of the president\u2019s son engaged in lewd acts with a sex worker<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20370%20247'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image-95.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"zeen-lazy-load-base zeen-lazy-load wp-image-4465\"\/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image-95.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4465\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image-95.png 1024w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image-95-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image-95-770x514.png 770w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image-95-370x247.png 370w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image-95-293x195.png 293w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image-95-120x80.png 120w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image-95-240x160.png 240w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image-95-390x260.png 390w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/noscript><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Supervisory IRS Special Agent Gary Shapley and IRS Criminal Investigator Joseph Ziegler talk with each other as they arrive for a House Oversight Committee hearing (Getty)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>The Department of Justice denied agents investigating Hunter Biden\u2019s taxes and foreign business deals access&nbsp;to evidence and witnesses, according to two IRS whistleblowers.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The House Oversight Committee heard testimony from Special Agent Joseph Ziegler and his supervisor Gary Shapley of the IRS during a six-hour hearing Wednesday. The two agents involved in Biden\u2019s criminal probe expressed frustration at how US attorney for Delaware David Weiss and prosecutors within the DoJ handled the investigation.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt appeared to me, based on what I experienced, that the US attorney in Delaware in our investigation was constantly hamstrung, limited and marginalized\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Department of Justice denied agents investigating Hunter Biden\u2019s taxes and foreign business deals access&nbsp;to evidence and witnesses, according to two IRS whistleblowers.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The House Oversight Committee heard testimony from Special Agent Joseph Ziegler and his supervisor Gary Shapley of the IRS during a six-hour hearing Wednesday. The two agents involved in Biden\u2019s criminal probe expressed frustration at how US attorney for Delaware David Weiss and prosecutors within the DoJ handled the investigation.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt appeared to me, based on what I experienced, that the US attorney in Delaware in our investigation was constantly hamstrung, limited and marginalized by DoJ officials as well as other US attorneys,\u201d said Ziegler, who had been known only as \u201cAgent X\u201d before Wednesday\u2019s hearing.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Ziegler, Biden\u2019s plea deal did not match the charges that IRS investigators discussed with prosecutors leading up to the announcement. In August 2022, federal prosecutors from the DoJ tax division drafted a ninety-nine-page memorandum that recommended felony and misdemeanor charges for 2017-2019 tax years. \u201cThat did not happen here. I am not sure why,\u201d Ziegler said.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Among the charges that Ziegler investigated were Biden\u2019s misfiled business expenses in his 2018 tax returns. Biden filed a hotel room for his drug dealer, membership to a sex club and college tuition for his adult daughter as business deduction, which resulted in his total income being underreported by $260,000.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Shapley, who has worked at the IRS for fourteen years, said he first started seeing deviations from standard procedure in June 2020, but it wasn\u2019t until an October 2022 meeting with Weiss that he reached \u201ca red line.\u201d At the meeting, Weiss told senior FBI and IRS agents that he was not the \u201cdeciding person on whether charges were filed\u201d despite Attorney General Merrick Garland\u2019s testimony that Weiss had complete authority in the case. Prosecutors had already been declined special authority in Washington, DC, and Weiss admitted that he would need an attorney appointed by Joe Biden to partner with him to charge the case outside of his district. \u201cI understood the gravity of those admissions,\u201d Shapley said.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both whistleblowers also complained that they were barred access to evidence, including Biden\u2019s laptop and iCloud backup that suggested Biden was sitting next to his father while contacting a Chinese business associate. According to Shapley, Delaware assistant US attorney Lesley Wolf blocked investigators from asking witnesses questions about&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thespectator.com\/tag\/joe-biden\">Joe Biden<\/a>&nbsp;and Justice Department officials stopped them from interviewing Hunter\u2019s adult children, after finding evidence potentially linking them to Hunter\u2019s finances.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhen the subject\u2019s father is somehow related to the finances of the subject, in the normal course of any investigation, we would have to get that information, to properly vet the financial flows of money, and determine what we end up charging,\u201d Shapley said.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At one eyebrow-raising point during the hearing, Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/marjorie-taylor-greene-displaying-hunter-biden-nude-photos-shocks-congress-1814159\">brandished<\/a>&nbsp;blown-up photographs of Hunter Biden engaging in sexual acts with \u201ca prostitute he had paid for out of his law firm\u2019s bank account.\u201d<ins><\/ins><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p style=\"font-size:18px\"><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/GY17svyacK\">pic.twitter.com\/GY17svyacK<\/a>\u2014 Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC)&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChuckRossDC\/status\/1681748406794952704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 19, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight panel, said&nbsp;that there is no concrete evidence that the president was involved in his son\u2019s business dealings or gave him preferential treatment in the investigation. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll hear about how they disagreed on investigative steps and what criminal charges to bring on normal stuff in government investigations that doesn\u2019t usually lead to a congressional hearing,\u201d Raskin&nbsp;said. \u201cBut one thing you will not hear today is any evidence of wrongdoing, by President Joe Biden or his administration.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Original Article: <a href=\"https:\/\/thespectator.com\/topic\/irs-whistleblowers-hunter-biden-joseph-ziegler-gary-shapley\/\">https:\/\/thespectator.com\/topic\/irs-whistleblowers-hunter-biden-joseph-ziegler-gary-shapley\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At one point in the hearing, Marjorie Taylor Greene produced stills of the president\u2019s son engaged in lewd acts with a sex worker The Department of Justice denied agents investigating Hunter Biden\u2019s taxes and foreign business deals access&nbsp;to evidence and witnesses, according to two IRS whistleblowers.&nbsp;&nbsp; The House Oversight Committee heard testimony from Special Agent Joseph Ziegler and his supervisor Gary Shapley of the IRS during a six-hour hearing Wednesday. The two agents involved in Biden\u2019s criminal probe expressed frustration [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hunter-biden"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4464"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4466,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4464\/revisions\/4466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}