Gary Shapley, a veteran agent with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), told House lawmakers Wednesday that the Justice Department slow-walked criminal proceedings into Hunter Biden to allow the statute of limitations to expire.
Shapley testified as one of two IRS whistleblowers on Capitol Hill alleging widespread interference in their criminal tax investigation of the Biden family. The second whistleblower revealed their identity at the Wednesday hearing as Joseph Ziegler, a gay Democrat with over a decade of tenure at the federal tax agency. Both served lead roles in the Biden investigation and said their efforts were hampered by officials at the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Shapley said U.S. Delaware Attorney David Weiss waited out the statute of limitations related to 2014-2015 financial crimes allowing the president’s son to evade additional charges. In June, news broke of a plea deal struck between Weiss and Hunter Biden limited to two misdemeanor tax crimes and a single felony charge over illegal firearm possession. The latter is forgiven after 24 months of sobriety, an agreement placed in jeopardy if the mysterious White House cocaine was linked to the first family’s son, who wrote a book on his struggle with drug addiction.
“In November of 2022, the statute of limitations was set to expire for the 2014 and 2015 charges in D.C., which included the 2014 felonies for the attempt to evade or defeat tax and fraud or false statement regarding Burisma income earned by Hunter Biden,” Shapley said.
Hunter Biden served on the board of the Ukrainian energy company raking in excess compensation despite having no prior experience in the industry.
“The statute of limitations had been extended through a tolling agreement with Hunter Biden’s defense counsel, and they were willing to extend it past 2022. Weiss allowed those to expire,” said Shapley.
Both whistleblowers told lawmakers that the DOJ left additional felonies off the table from the plea agreement prosecutors struck with Hunter Biden. Ziegler said IRS agents were pressured to avoid interviewing key witnesses in the case.
In June, transcripts of IRS whistleblower interviews with the House Ways and Means Committee have led to growing pressure on the federal judge overseeing the case to reject the plea deal between Hunter Biden and U.S. prosecutors.
According to the whistleblowers, the DOJ officials not only deliberately slow-walked the investigation and barred IRS officials from interviewing key witnesses, but the federal law enforcement agency kept key evidence from reaching IRS investigators. Federal prosecutors concealed the unclassified FD-1023 form housed by the FBI that was referred to Weiss’s team in Delaware by then-Attorney General William Barr under the previous administration.
