IRS Whistleblowers to Testify in Biden Probe Wednesday

For the first time in a public hearing, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee will hear the testimonies Wednesday from two IRS whistleblowers who investigated Hunter Biden. According to Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., the testimony speaks to his larger corruption investigation of President Joe Biden.

The two whistleblowers testifying are supervisory agent Gary Shapley, a 14-year veteran at the IRS, and an IRS criminal investigator, whose identity until tomorrow has been kept a secret.

According to the Washington Examiner, the anonymous whistleblower, commonly referred to as “Agent X,” is speaking out after he became “so upset over how the Democrats, including [Oversight Committee ranking member] Jamie Raskin [D-Md.], and others have mischaracterized their integrity” that he decided to publicly testify.

Shapley and Agent X were initially tasked with investigating Hunter Biden. They testified before the House Ways and Means Committee in June, and their allegations were made public. They claimed that political motives influenced the Department of Justice’s decisions to slow-walk and obfuscate the case. They also noted that they were prevented from questioning Hunter Biden, and that Delaware’s U.S. attorney, David Weiss, was not allowed to press charges in his preferred jurisdiction. Weiss’ request for special counsel status was also rejected.

The hearing, slated to last six hours, has been dubbed a “court of public opinion.” Chairman Comer hopes that the whistleblowers will demonstrate to the public how the Bidens engaged in money laundering and created shell companies to operate surreptitiously.

“I don’t think that a lot of people in the media understand what we’re talking about here,” Comer said. “[The Bidens] created companies that aren’t legitimate companies. They don’t produce any goods or services. They don’t make anything. They don’t sell anything. And it appears the sole purpose of those companies was to launder money to hide the source of revenue, which were from foreign nationals.”

The Oversight chairman added, “We’re gonna have some specific questions about some things that we think were violations of the law, and we’ll let these two witnesses answer that. So, I think that these two people will have some insight, and maybe they can answer some questions for a confused media out there.”

Other topics of the testimony are likely to include Hunter Biden not registering as a foreign agent during his time working as a board member with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings LLC and with CEFC, the Chinese energy company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

During the hearing, it is also expected that the concerns of retaliation against the two whistleblowers will be discussed. Once it was revealed that the whistleblowers were speaking to Congress, they were removed from the Biden investigation. Additionally, Shapley revealed that, at the time, he was overlooked for a promotion.

This has led the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., who will be present at tomorrow’s hearing, to request the Office of Special Counsel to open an investigation into allegations of retaliation.

“The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have reportedly engaged in unlawful whistleblower retaliation against veteran IRS employees,” the chairmans of the House Ways and Means, Judiciary, and Oversight Committees wrote in a letter to OSC July 5. They added that news reports “indicate that the whistleblower and the investigative team were removed from the Hunter Biden investigation by the IRS at DOJ’s request as retaliation for making protected whistleblower disclosures to Congress.”