News organizations have already determined that an investigation at the center of an IRS whistleblower's allegations involves President Biden's son. Now, we know the name of that whistleblower. In an exclusive interview with CBS News, Gary Shapley, a supervisory special agent with the IRS' criminal investigations arm, tells CBS' Jim Axelrod on Tuesday that right from the start, when he took over an investigation in January 2020 into Hunter Biden's taxes and a potential false statement about a gun buy, he felt something was off—to Biden's benefit. "It was way outside the norm of what I've experienced in the past," Shapley said, calling what he witnessed "deviations from normal process." He added: "There [were] multiple steps that were slow-walked at the direction of the Department of Justice."
Shapley, who's been with the IRS for 14 years, told Axelrod he hasn't been paid anything to come forward with his accusations, and that even though he's a registered Republican, he's not really politically active. "I'm just simply not a political person," he said. "This is a job, and my oath of office is to treat everybody fairly that we investigate." And what didn't seem fair, Shapley said, is that everything that went down pertaining to the investigation seemed to benefit Biden (whom he didn't name in the CBS interview), which is why Shapley started voicing his concerns about six months after he took over the probe.
In a letter to the Office of the Special Counsel sent last week, Shapley's attorneys say their client's team had a "charged" meeting with DOJ prosecutors in October, after which they say his team was removed from overseeing the probe. "It was my red-line meeting," Shapley told Axelrod. "It just got to that point where that switch was turned on, and I just couldn't silence my conscience anymore." Shapley will be testifying in front of the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday, though his appearance won't be open to the public.
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Per CNN, an aide for the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday said Shapley's team backed out of a meeting next week with that panel; a source tells the outlet that Shapley's legal team had never agreed to a date. No criminal charges have been brought against Biden, though last October, a leak out of the IRS claimed that federal agents had gathered enough evidence to do so. The DOJ and US attorney's office in Delaware declined to comment, as did the IRS, which simply noted: "Under federal law, the IRS can't comment on specific taxpayer matters," adding that the agency remains "deeply committed to protecting the role of whistleblowers." (More whistleblower stories.)
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