A decorated IRS agent provided Congress six hours of testimony and seven critical documents Friday that gave lawmakers insights into the origins of the Hunter Biden criminal tax probe and evidence of political interference inside the Justice Department dating to the 2020 election.
Gary Shapley, an IRS supervisory criminal investigator granted whistleblower status, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, fielding questions from staff from Democrat and Republican lawmakers, his legal team announced.
Sources familiar with the session told Just the News that Shapley turned over seven documents totaling 23 pages that summarized the evidence and predicate for the original investigation into the taxes and overseas finances of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son.
The memos also summarized multiple instances dating to 2020 in which DOJ officials thwarted, hampered or interfered with the frontline career investigators’ efforts – ranging from blocking certain tactics to allowing tolling agreements to expire that extended the statute of limitations on certain alleged offenses. Shapley described IRS and FBI agents being concerned by the interference.
The lawyers for Shapley, Mark Lytle and Tristan Leavitt, declined to discuss the specific of his testimony but confirmed the session occurred and that it involved bipartisan questioning.
“IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley testified for about six hours today to Democrat and Republican staff of the House Ways and Means Committee,” his legal team said in a statement. “Both sides had equal opportunity to ask whatever questions they wanted, and Special Agent Shapley answered all of their questions.”
Shapley’s name had been concealed prior to Wednesday, when Just the News confirmed his identity. He has alleged that federal prosecutors engaged in “preferential treatment and politics” to prevent charges from being brought against Hunter Biden as part of an ongoing tax investigation.
In a brief interview with CBS ahead of his testimony, Shapley previewed the concerns that led him to reach out to the DOJ inspector general and Congress as a whistleblower.
“There were multiple steps that were slow-walked – were just completely not done – at the direction of the Department of Justice,” the 14-year veteran agent told CBS.
“When I took control of this particular investigation, I immediately saw deviations from the normal process. It was way outside the norm of what I’ve experienced in the past,” he also said.
Shapley, a widely respected IRS agent who helped the agency build big cases included against Swiss banks, first approached the government’s internal watchdog with the help of whistleblower attorney Mark Zaid late last year.
Shapley eventually went to Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, the same watchdog who debunked the Russia collusion narrative and unmasked FBI abuses in the probe of former President Donald Trump.
The IRS agent has since filed a formal complaint of retaliation with the Office of Special Counsel, alleging that he was sidelined from the investigation after he made protected disclosures and that he had been passed over for promotion despite being the most qualified candidate for the post.
His attorneys have since disclosed to Congress that Shapley and his entire team had been officially removed from the case at the behest of the Justice Department in what they deemed another retaliatory act.
Lytle and Leavitt wrote to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel earlier this week, suggesting there were other whistleblowers coming forward to back Shapley’s story.
They cited a separate agent’s communication to the IRS. In that communication, Shapley’s subordinate case agent appeared to indicate that the pair’s efforts to call attention to pervasive problems affecting the investigation had gone on for years.
“For the last couple years, my SSA and I have tried to gain the attention of our senior leadership about certain issues prevalent regarding the investigation.
“I have asked for countless meetings with our chief and deputy chief, often to be left out on an island and not heard from. The lack of IRS-CI senior leadership involvement is deeply troubling and unacceptable,” the case agent told Werfel.
In his whistleblower complaint to the Office of Special Counsel, obtained by Just the News, Shapley disclosed evidence of interference in the Hunter Biden case started in the summer of 2020.
Shapley’s “protected disclosures began in the summer of 2020, when he began noting irregularities in how the Department of Justice was handling the case,” including at least one U.S. attorney’s office and the DOJ’s tax division, according to the complaint.
Shapley “informed his management chain that DOJ’s handing of the case failed to follow established precedent,” the complaint letter also states.
Two years of complaints boiled over in an Oct. 7, 2022, meeting with Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, the chief prosecutors in the Hunter Biden case, also according to the letter.
“In a charged meeting on October 7,2022, U.S.Attorney for the District of Delaware became aware that both the IRS and the FBI had longstanding concerns about the handling of the case, and that he had been communicating his concerns up his chain of command,” the complaint letter states.
After that meeting, Shapley “and his IRS team were no longer invited to any further prosecutorial team calls and meetings on the case, effectively excluding them from the case,” also according to the letter.
