Sen. Chuck Grassley wrote to the IRS director in a letter obtained solely by The Federalist in a criminal case involving Hunter Biden, claiming that the Justice Department and the IRS want to “dirt up the very whistleblowers” who exposed social partiality and misbehavior in the Hunter Biden analysis. The charges against the government’s son are confirmed by a review of Special Counsel David Weiss ‘ underlying court filing, which also highlights that Attorney General Merrick Garland should have never had chosen Weiss as special counsel.
Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, two IRS whistleblowers, were the subject of a letter sent by Grassley to the director on Thursday informing him of the firm’s retaliation. Beginning in 2020, according to the Iowa Republican, Shapley and Ziegler “made constitutionally protected journalist revelations to IRS representatives regarding state misconduct relating to the Hunter Biden analysis.” The land was given more information about the leak charges after more of them were made public to the House Ways and Means Committee, and that council’s decision to release documents and evidence related to its investigation into the journalist charges.
The reporters also made it clear to the House Ways and Means Committee that the Hunter Biden research had been completely thwarted: investigators were poorly limited in their ability to question witnesses and what, and then someone tipped off the Biden change group, preventing agents from interrogating nearly a hundred witnesses.
But the obfuscation went much higher. The whistleblowers ‘ advice was in a 99-page memorandum that felony and misdemeanor charges be brought against Hunter Biden in early August 2022. The DOJ refused to permit the prosecution to bring charges against Hunter Biden in D.C. or California, and the Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys in those districts refused to file charges, so prosecutors allowed the statute of limitations to continue on the most serious felony counts.
Instead, Weiss’s office offered Hunter Biden a sweetheart misdemeanor plea deal. After that deal collapsed following questioning by a federal judge on the propriety of the agreement, Garland, in August 2023, named Weiss special counsel. On December 7, 2023, Weiss finally had the authority to bring charges against Hunter Biden in a nine-count indictment in the Central District of California, which he did. Weiss brought felony gun charges against the president’s son in his native Delaware, along with the felony tax charges brought against him in California.
Hunter Biden’s wealthy attorneys quickly carried out a multi-prong offensive to stop the soaring charges. As Grassley’s Thursday letter detailed:
Hunter Biden’s attorneys went into overdrive to try and discredit these brave whistleblowers. According to a New York Times article from June 27, 2023, Hunter Biden’s attorneys claimed to have violated federal law by making legally protected whistleblower disclosures to Congress regarding the improper handling of the client investigation. On June 30, 2023, Hunter Biden’s attorney allegedly complained to House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith that Shapley and Zeigler’s whistleblower disclosures were unlawful in a letter sent to him on June 30th, 2023.
While it is not surprising that Hunter Biden’s well- heeled attorneys would seek to represent their client zealously, even if it meant attacking the whistleblowers, as Grassley’s letter highlights, a recent filing in the California tax case suggests Weiss and the IRS are cooperating in those efforts. The senator was concerned that Shapley and Ziegler may be the subject of an investigation by the DOJ and FBI due to their “making legally protected disclosures.”
Of concern was Weiss’s March 11, 2024, response to Hunter Biden’s motion to dismiss the tax charges based on supposedly “outrageous government conduct”. Hunter argued in his motion that the special counsel should not be pursuing the tax charges because Shapley and Ziegler purposefully disclosed his sensitive tax information.  ,
Weiss argued in his response that Hunter had failed to provide any proof that the special counsel’s office had any connection to the alleged “outrageous government conduct.” The special counsel noted that the indictment came more than a year after Shapley and Ziegler were dropped from the Hunter-Biden investigation.  ,
Weiss had the opportunity to end there, but instead Hunter argued that” the IRS took no action to address Shapley and Ziegler’s decision to make public statements” are “pure.” Then, according to Weiss ‘ response memo, he cited a declaration he filed under seal that, according to the prosecution,” the IRS has taken responsible steps to address Shapley and Ziegler’s conduct.”
A sealant’s request for the declaration and two other exhibits were filed with the special counsel’s response at the same time. According to Weiss, the three exhibits he sought to seal “relate] ] to a potential ongoing investigation ( s )”. Those potential investigations are unrelated to Hunter Biden, Weiss stressed.
According to Weiss ‘ description of the exhibits, Shapley and Ziegler are the subjects of one or more investigations, which is the most logical conclusion. In his Thursday letter, Grassley skewered the special counsel, saying,” On the one hand, the Justice Department has argued that a “potential ongoing investigation” is so sensitive that it cannot be publicly revealed, and yet, it has done that in a public filing.”
The senator from Iowa continued,” If this’potential ongoing investigation ‘ relates to Shapley and Ziegler, its reference in public and sealed court documents can only be seen as a justice department and IRS tactic dirty up the very whistleblowers who exposed Justice Department and IRS misconduct.” The conduct of U.S. Attorney Weiss in any such investigation would be considered a conflict of interest because he would be looking into and possibly prosecuting whistleblowers who reported misconduct to him, Grassley then said.
Grassley, who has been a stalwart protector of whistleblowers, asked the IRS to confirm whether Shapley and Ziegler were the subject of an ongoing investigation and, if so, when and why the IRS chief counsel shared that information with the Justice Department, given the actual conflicts of interest among the whistleblowers, Weiss, and the DOJ more broadly.
” We appreciate Congress taking steps to ensure DOJ is transparent about whether the government is engaged in a retaliatory investigation of the IRS whistleblowers”, Tristan Leavitt, the president of Empower Oversight, which represents the whistleblowers, told The Federalist when asked about Grassley’s letter.
Leavitt, however, stressed that the conflict of interest is not limited to the criminal case against Hunter Biden. Leavitt told The Federalist that the DOJ’s conflicts of interest extend to” Hunter Biden’s baseless lawsuit accusing the IRS whistleblowers of crimes,” in a letter Empower Oversight sent Garland last week. The DOJ has yet to argue that the IRS’s statements were whistleblower disclosures in defending Hunter Biden’s separate civil lawsuit against the IRS.
Grassley’s demand for answers from the IRS about the DOJ’s conflict of interest in the criminal case against Hunter Biden may provide a necessary spotlight on the Biden administration’s animus toward the whistleblowers, which extends to Hunter Biden’s civil case against the government. As Shapley and Ziegler’s attorney told The Federalist,” DOJ’s interests align too closely with Hunter Biden’s for these actors to be impartial”. Weiss was chosen as a special counsel because it made no sense to do that.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion, National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She then worked for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals as a permanent law clerk for nearly 25 years. Former full-time university professor, Cleveland teaches adjunct occasionally. The New Civil Liberties Alliance also has Cleveland as its attorney. You can follow Cleveland on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland to learn more about her most cherished accomplishments, including her husband and son. Cleveland’s opinions are those of her personal life in this article.
