Whistleblowers accuse feds of covering up Hunter Biden case

Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers now say they were ordered by Justice Department, FBI and IRS leaders not to investigate President Biden or his son Hunter Biden after the disclosure of the first son’s laptop in anticipation of the probe. 2020 presidential election, as the Bidens were deemed “sensitive” individuals deserving of special protection in the investigation. Republicans have long been collecting information about the laptop and its contents, and the device helped secure Biden’s conviction in two criminal cases in recent months.

In a conversation with independent journalist Catherine Herridge, IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler say their bosses were wrongfully intervened in the investigation, despite the fact that they “knew” the laptop was real “many months” before the New York Post reported it in October 2020.

“There were a lot of explicit investigative steps that we weren’t allowed to take because we had an investigation to do,” Mr. Ziegler says.

“This was many months before October 2020. We confirmed some aspects that this was real and legal back in late 2019,” Mr Shapley said of the laptop. “It was clear that before the elections there was a campaign to discredit this information. “Ultimately, I think you can conclude that this was done to influence this election.”

The House Judiciary Committee, which has been investigating the Biden family, their business dealings, the laptop and alleged interference with law enforcement investigations into the entire case, on Tuesday described Ms. Herridge’s report as “HUGE BREAKING NEWS.” The committee’s chairman, Congressman Jim Jordan, says, “It was always a cover-up.”

One of the most salacious emails retrieved from Biden’s infamous laptop detailed how proceeds from a certain deal would be split, with ten percent listed as a payout to someone referred to only as “the big guy,” which, according to many believe is the president, including whistleblowers who conducted the investigation. “We have confirmed that the big guy was Joe Biden,” Mr. Shapley said.

Ms. Herridge says IRS officials sent an email to officials investigating Biden shortly after the first son pleaded guilty. guilty California tax collections in September. The first son denies wrongdoing in the case but says he pleaded guilty to keep embarrassing details about his life out of the headlines for the sake of his family.

“These are words that are not backed up by agency action,” Mr. Shapley said of the email sent by his bosses praising investigators for helping secure a guilty plea from Mr. Biden.

Mr. Shapley added that he knows the “IRS watchdog” is “looking into how they handled this and sees the writing on the wall.”

Mr. Ziegler described the department’s so-called “sensitive investigations,” which provide special protections to certain officials who are being investigated by the IRS.

The sensitive investigation that Mr. Ziegler refers to, definite in Part Nine, Chapter Four, Section One of the IRS Handbook for Employees and Investigators. Officials and entities classified as “sensitive” include all currently serving elected officials of the federal government, current federal judges and current senior executive branch officials, as well as elected officials and judges holding senior state positions. . .

Why Biden was viewed as a “sensitive” individual in his own investigation does not seem to correlate with IRS leadership, given that Biden was not an elected official or judge of any level at the time of the investigation, and neither was his father. The IRS guidance does not mention retired senior government officials, which represented the president’s status as a private citizen running for president in 2020.

Stories about the laptop were quickly dismissed by former intelligence, military and diplomatic officials in an open letter first reported by Politico in 2020. any evidence for such claims. This was stated by the acting director of the CIA under President Obama, Mike Morell. interview in the House of Representatives in 2023, it was revealed that Secretary of State Blinken—a letter signatory who was at the time a senior foreign policy adviser to Biden’s 2020 reelection campaign—had “rushed” into releasing the letter to deny the disclosure. laptop.

Both whistleblowers also criticized special counsel Jack Smith, who, with permission from Judge Tanya Chutkan, was able to release confidential information about the federal election interference prosecution that Mr. Smith is now pursuing against President Trump.

Ms. Herridge was holding a copy of the evidentiary material released by Judge Chutkan just weeks before the 2024 election, which whistleblowers say would not have happened if Trump’s last name had been Biden.

“Based on what we saw in the Hunter Biden case, this document would never have been released four weeks before the election,” Mr. Shapley says.