America's Talking - GOP Leadership Decries Alleged Retaliation Against Hunter Biden Whistleblowers

Episode Date: June 23, 2024

A coalition of leading Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives is raising concerns about allegations that the Internal Revenue Service has retaliated against whistleblowers. IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler came forward and testified before Congress last year that the Biden administration mishandled the investigation into the alleged tax misdeeds of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son. The whistleblowers testified before Congress, as the Center Square previously reported, that Hunter received special treatment. Hunter Biden faces pending tax charges. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, June 21st. The Internal Revenue Service is under scrutiny after whistleblowers came forward and testified before Congress that the Biden administration mishandled an investigation into alleged tax wrongdoings of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden's son.

The whistleblowers now say that, They have been retaliated against by the IRS for coming forward. Joining me today to discuss this is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, let's start with some of the background. What did the whistleblowers Gary Shepley and Joseph Ziegler testified to? Yeah, I mean, this was bombshell testimony at the time, and we covered it closely at thecenter square.com. You know, Shepley and Ziegler are longtime IRS employees.

These are not conservative pundits. these are not, you know, people who came out of the woodwork. These guys have been at the IRS for the combined experience of 27 years, right? So there's a lot of credibility. They worked on many cases. And they both testified that, and they were both directly involved in Hunter Biden's case. And they said that Hunter Biden's case was very much unlike cases they had worked on in the past. They told Congress, an open public testimony, that this case was handled differently and that the Biden administration, in fact, sought preferential treatment for Hunter Biden. Biden, which is very interesting. And I think that's kind of the crux of the issue here. For instance,

they testified that assistant U.S. attorney Leslie Wolfe interfered. That's an interesting word, but was involved in the investigation and actually helped block the, for instance, the IRS from getting a search warrant for the Biden residents in Delaware, which would have been very interesting. Also, they wanted to interview President Biden, but they were blocked from doing so as part of the investigation into Hunter. And so there was that Biden administration interference is really an interesting point. They both testified against it and said that really there was politicization at the Department of Justice that influenced the IRS in a way that they had not experienced before. They came forward to Congress about it. And now, Dan, they say they're being retaliated against.

So what do you do when you feel like you're being retaliated against the federal government? Well, you file a claim and you say, hey, my boss or whoever, you know, different people within my eight workplace. and my agency are punishing me for being a whistleblower. And then that claim is processed and something is done. But in this case, you know, surprise or maybe no surprise, the claims, the whistleblower claims, the complaints that these two whistleblowers have filed have really not been addressed, Dan, which may not come as surprise to you, but these lawmakers are saying, hey, not only these guys apparently being retaliated against, they're not being protected by the people who should be stepping in to protect them. Right. Now,

leading Republicans in the House, which of course Republicans have a slight majority and including speaker, Mike Johnson, they want answers from the IRS and the DOJ. They sent a letter this week. Tell us about that. Yeah. So, I mean, this letter is getting to the heart and putting a lot of pressure on these. What really, you know, as a part of the government that is meant expressly to protect whistleblowers and has either been, you know, maybe dragging their feet. purposefully or not purposefully, but this is raised to the attention. And this is of Congress. And this isn't just, you know, some outside, you know, very conservative member of Congress by himself. This isn't even just House oversight chair, James Comer of Kentucky, who's sending a lot of these letters.

This goes all the way up to Speaker Mike Johnson. So the Speaker of the House is directly involved in this case, which, of course, has to be comforting to the two whistleblowers, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler. So this goes all the way to the top. There's other, you know, Republican leaders across different committees who are involved. And they're saying, hey, we want answers on this. We want movement on this. And we want it soon. And so I think this is really going to put a fire. It's drawing media coverage as we're doing even now. So this is, of course, the whistleblowers have to be happy about this. And especially because it goes all the way to Mike Johnson. Casey, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with it.

this ongoing story and more at thecenter square.com.