Biden-Appointed D.C. U.S. Attorney Quashed Hunter’s Felony Tax Charges, IRS Whistleblower Testifies

IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testified Wednesday that the U.S. attorney for D.C., who was appointed by President Biden, had final say over whether charges would be brought against Hunter Biden and that the Biden appointee was the one who made the call not to charge the younger Biden with a felony.

Shapley, who worked as an IRS investigator for over ten years and oversaw the agency’s tax investigation into Hunter Biden, told the House Oversight Committee that despite Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss claiming he had ultimate authority over the investigation that in fact D.C. U.S. attorney Matthew Graves was in charge.

“After U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matthew Graves, appointed by President Biden, refused to bring charges, I watched Mr. Weiss tell a room full of senior FBI and IRS investigators on October 7, 2022, that he was ‘not the deciding person on whether charges are filed,’” Shapley said. 

Graves’s wife, Fatima Gross Graves, has visited the White House at least 28 times since Biden took office. In the first three months of 2023 alone Graves, a vocal liberal activist, visited the White House ten times.

Weiss, meanwhile, has publicly flip-flopped over whether he had authority on when and whether to bring charges. He said in a June 7 letter to House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan that he did in fact have charging authority, but later walked back that claim in a second letter on June 30.

Jordan suggested during the hearing on Wednesday that the change was sparked by Shapley and another IRS whistleblower’s testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee being made public. 

Shapley testified that during an October 2022 meeting Weiss said he was not the deciding person on whether or not charges were filed and that the U.S. attorney in D.C. had declined to allow charges to be filed.

“He told us that he had requested special counsel authority from main DOJ and was denied that authority,” Shapley testified.

Later that day, Shapley sent an email to his bosses in which he put in writing what had been discussed during the meeting with Weiss. One of Shapley’s bosses, the special agent in charge of the Washington, D.C., field office replied, “Thanks, Gary. You covered it all.”

The identity of the second IRS whistleblower was revealed on Wednesday. IRS agent Joseph Ziegler, who had previously offered testimony to Congress as an unnamed whistleblower, testified at the hearing and explained he is a “gay Democrat” who wanted to “do what is right.”

“I had recently heard an elected official say that I must be more credible, because I am a gay Democrat married to a man,” Ziegler said in his opening remarks.

“I’m no more credible than this man sitting next to me due to my sexual orientation or my political beliefs. I was raised and have always strived to do what is right,” he added.

“I have heard from some that I am a traitor to the Democratic Party and that I am causing more division in our society. I implore you, that if you were put in my position with the facts as I have stated them, that you would be doing the exact same thing — regardless of your political party affiliation,” Ziegler said. 

Shapley and Ziegler have said they pushed for felony charges against Hunter Biden in the tax probe and that Weiss wanted to bring charges against the younger Biden in the District of Columbia and Southern California last year but was denied by DOJ officials both times.

Instead, Hunter Biden has agreed to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors related to his failure to pay his taxes in 2017 and 2018. He will also enter a probation agreement that will allow him to avoid jail time for possessing a handgun while intoxicated in 2018.

The gun charge centered on the younger Biden’s acknowledgment in his recent autobiography that he was using crack nearly every 15 minutes around the time he purchased a handgun in 2018 despite claiming on a federal background check that he was not using illicit drugs.

Shapley claimed investigators sought to search the Bidens’ Delaware residence in connection with the Hunter Biden tax probe because the younger Biden had spent significant time there. But assistant U.S. attorney Lesley Wolf allegedly warned investigators to consider the optics of performing such an investigation, Shapley said, though investigators believed there was a significant chance they would find a lot of evidence in the home.

“Lesley Wolf told us there was more than enough probable cause for the physical search warrant there,” Shapley said in testimony last month, “but the question was whether the juice was worth the squeeze.”

Shapley said Wolf told the team during a September 2020 meeting that “optics were a driving factor in the decision on whether to execute a search warrant. She said a lot of evidence in our investigation would be found in the guest house of former Vice President Biden, but said there is no way we will get that approved.”

The IRS agent also claimed that in a July 2017 Whatsapp message from Hunter Biden to his Chinese associate Henry Zhao, a CCP official, the younger Biden wrote that he was “sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.”

“Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” Hunter Biden allegedly wrote in a text to Zhao, whose Harvest Fund Management invested in Hunter Biden’s BHR Partners. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

Shapley has said prosecutors instructed investigators not to follow any leads that involved President Biden.