The IRS Whistleblowers, Merrick Garland and the ‘Big Guy’

That sounds like the classic offer you can’t refuse, and IRS investigators say they wanted to follow up but were blocked by Justice officials. Gary Shapley, an IRS supervisory special agent, said they wanted to search the guest house at Joe Biden’s Delaware home where Hunter stayed at the time.

Mr. Shapley says that at a Sept. 3, 2020, meeting Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf agreed that there was “more than enough probable cause for the physical search warrant there,” and that “a lot of evidence in our investigation would be found in the guest house of former Vice President Biden.” He says she later told him that U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who was leading the Hunter investigation, “had reviewed the affidavit for search warrant of Hunter Biden’s residence and agreed that probable cause had been achieved.”

But Mr. Shapley says Ms. Wolf said “that optics were a driving factor in the decision on whether to execute a search warrant,” and that “the question was whether the juice was worth the squeeze.” He says she added “there is no way we will get that approved.” The Shapley team never got the warrant.

Mr. Shapley and another whistleblower say one DOJ excuse was the possibility that Hunter was lying about his father’s presence in that WhatsApp text. Mr. Shapley: “So then we said, well, let’s get the location data for the messages, and if they’re co-located, then we’re on better ground here, right?” The second whistleblower says such an effort “would be what we would normally do.”

But Mr. Shapley says “they didn’t allow us to do it.” The Washington Free Beacon recently reported that timestamped photos from Hunter’s laptop “place him at his father’s Wilmington, Delaware, residence on the day” he sent the WhatsApp message.

Mr. Shapley adds that “there were multiple times where [Ms. Wolf] said that she didn’t want to ask questions about dad.” Investigators say they asked to query Hunter’s business partner, Rob Walker, about a 2017 email that outlines a CEFC business arrangement with “Ten held by H for the big guy,” who could be President Biden. But Ms. Wolf “interjected and said she did not want to ask about the big guy,” says Mr. Shapley.

Attorney General Garland hasn’t commented on these details, but he also hasn’t denied them. The most he’s said so far is that Mr. Weiss was “permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted.” In a June 7 letter to Congress, Mr. Weiss said that he had “ultimate authority over this matter,” including “where, when and whether to file charges.”

Yet that is contradicted by Mr. Shapley, who told Congress that in a Oct. 7, 2022, meeting Mr. Weiss said “I’m not the deciding official on whether charges are filed.” Mr. Shapley says Mr. Weiss added that District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves wouldn’t let him indict Hunter there. Mr. Shapley said he later learned that Martin Estrada, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, had blocked charges from being filed there.

An email from the same day that Mr. Shapley provided to Congress backs up his testimony about Mr. Weiss. Mr. Shapley’s lawyers have also issued a letter with the names of four of the six people present in that meeting with Mr. Weiss. The New York Times reported Wednesday that it confirmed that Mr. Weiss’s request to charge in California had been denied.

The House is continuing to investigate, and these officials will get their chance to testify under oath. Does Mr. Garland think the IRS agents are lying, or did he not know what his underlings were doing? The credibility of the AG and his department is on the line.