Saturday, June 24, 2023

Whistleblowers: DOJ Told IRS Not to Interview Biden's Family Members or Ask Questions about 'Big Guy,' 'Dad'

Whistleblowers: DOJ Told IRS Not to Interview Biden's Family Members or Ask Questions about 'Big Guy,' 'Dad'

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

We’ve seen a lot of concerning things revealed in the transcripts of interviews with two IRS whistleblowers who told Congress that decisions about a probe into the Biden corruption by the DOJ, FBI, and IRS were seemingly “influenced by politics.”

We heard about the WhatsApp message where Hunter Biden was threatening a Chinese official, claiming his father was in the room with him. That blew up, yet again, Joe Biden’s claim that he never talked with his son about his business.

The whistleblowers also shockingly revealed that the FBI confirmed the laptop was Hunter’s back on Nov. 6, 2019. Yet despite all the claims about Russian disinformation, the FBI sat on that and never clarified the issue when they knew the truth. Instead, the 51 former intel officials were able to spread the claim in October 2020 that it was like “likely Russian disinformation,” although they had no evidence to support that.

IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley was one of the whistleblowers; the other was an unnamed IRS agent. Shapley told Congress that the “DOJ provided preferential treatment, slow-walked the investigation, did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation.” He said the investigation into Hunter Biden began in 2018 when they were looking into “a foreign-based amateur online pornography platform.”

He said they were seeking search warrants in the spring of 2020 and wanted to conduct “approximately 15 contemporaneous interviews at that time.” But the DOJ stood in their way. They wanted to search Joe Biden’s guest house in September 2020, where Hunter stayed at one point but were stopped by the DOJ, despite having probable cause.

According to Shapley, Assistant United States Attorney Lesley Wolf also didn’t want them to ask about the “Big Guy” or “Dad.”

Among other things, we wanted to question Walker about an email that said: “Ten held by H for the big guy.” We had obvious questions like who was H, who the big guy was, and why this percentage was to be held separately with the association hidden.

But AUSA Wolf interjected and said she did not want to ask about the big guy and stated she did not want to ask questions about “dad.” When multiple people in the room spoke up and objected that we had to ask, she responded, there’s no specific criminality to that line of questioning.

Shapley noted that when the FBI finally interviewed Walker, they avoided the topic of Joe Biden:

The FBI agent continued: “Any times when he was in office, or did you hear Hunter Biden say that he was setting up a meeting with his dad with them while dad was still in office?”

Walker answered: “Yes.”

And, inexplicably, the FBI agent changed the subject.

The IRS wanted to search a storage unit that Hunter had in Dec. 2020. Again, AUSA Wolf objected. Shapley contacted US Attorney David Weiss, who gave the okay if the unit hadn’t been accessed for 30 days. But even as they did that, Wolf contacted Hunter’s attorney about the storage unit, thus tipping off that they knew about it, according to Shapley.

The IRS investigators also wanted to interview Joe Biden’s grandchildren because some of the payments they were investigating involved the grandchildren, including a $30,000 tuition payment to Columbia University. So normally, they would interview the people involved. According to the whistleblowers, Hunter Biden was wrongly claiming such amounts as business write-offs.

But that was shut down by Wolf as well, who said that would “get us into a lot of hot water if we interview the President’s grandchildren.”

“I don’t remember what ultimately happened with the grandchildren. I know I have never interviewed them, and we have not interviewed them,” he said.

The unnamed whistleblower said that his supervisor suggested documenting meetings between IRS and officials in U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ office, who were running point on the probe.

“My supervisor felt it necessary when some of the inappropriate comments that were being made — to start documenting them,” the whistleblower said.

“There were a lot of times to where they would discuss the election or discuss politics, and I had to say, on multiple occasions, that I felt that it was inappropriate that they were saying it,” he said.

The whistleblower also detailed that Venmo transactions were paid to “family and friends,” and Hunter deducted those on his returns as well. They wanted to interview those relatives as well. But that was also a no-go.

So I continually asked, “Can I go and interview them? And can we understand what these payments were for? If they made other payments?” And those were always met with no. And I think one of them was Valerie Owens that we talked about that I wasn’t allowed to go and do that interview. I believe that Valerie is a relative of Joe Biden. It might be his sister. I don’t — all I know is she’s a relative of his.

The unnamed agent said that the U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who was supposed to have the powers of a special counsel, was “constantly hamstrung, limited, and marginalized.” As we reported, the DOJ allegedly twice stopped him from bringing charges before the sweetheart plea deal that they finally came up with.

How can anyone look at that and think that the investigation wasn’t hampered or interfered with? How can you investigate anything with your hands tied behind your back like that? We see everything thrown at former President Donald Trump at record speed in the harshest manner. Yet everything applied to the Bidens is full of delay and things like this. There needs to be a full investigation into the alleged interference that went on here.