A server who has worked for 14 years at the Internal Revenue Service (the US equivalent of our Federal Revenue Service) revealed on Wednesday (24) to be the whistleblower in the case of the ongoing criminal investigation into Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden.
Gary Shapley, who was recently removed from the Justice Department investigation, spoke with the “CBS Evening News” two days before a scheduled meeting with the House Ways and Means Committee, scheduled for Friday.
“Several steps have taken place at a slow pace, or not at all, under the direction of the Department of Justice,” Shapley told CBS News investigative reporter Jim Axelrod during the interview. “When I took over this particular investigation, I immediately saw the deviations from the normal process. The process was well outside the norm of what I had seen in the past.”
“For some years, we noticed these deviations in the investigative process. I could not understand why the Department of Justice acted unethically in this case,” he added.
Shapley told CBS News that he was concerned about the way federal prosecutors were handling “a high-profile, controversial investigation.” Several sources have confirmed for the CNN that the person at the center of this investigation is Hunter Biden.
In a recent letter to a federal watchdog agency, Shapley’s lawyers said the first time he raised concerns about “irregularities” in the Justice Department’s handling of the case was in the mid-2020s, during the Trump administration. . The IRS server said he continued to voice his concerns about the case in the years since, under the Biden administration.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware, which is overseeing the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden, declined to comment on the case, as did a Justice Department spokesman. The IRS did not respond to a request for an interview.
Server Shapley claimed he wasn’t reporting the wrongdoing of the case for political reasons, telling CBS he “doesn’t get involved in any of that.” He added: “It’s not what I want to do. I’m just not a political person. It’s a job, and my oath of office is to treat everyone we investigate fairly.”
According to Shapley’s account to the TV show, a tense meeting in October 2022 was his “last straw”. He said that “it got to that point where that switch was flipped, and I just couldn’t silence my conscience any longer.”
Federal prosecutors spent years (in which three attorneys general served) investigating Hunter Biden. They looked at whether or not to indict the president’s son for alleged tax crimes and issuing a false statement such as the CNN previously reported. So far, no accusations have been made. Hunter Biden denies wrongdoing.
Whistleblower Shapley’s attorneys had hoped their client would be able to testify before House and Senate committees, and recently voiced their frustration that a bicameral interview was not scheduled.
On Wednesday (24), an adviser to the Senate Finance Committee said that the whistleblower’s team had withdrawn from the testimony.
“Committee staff agreed to meet directly with the whistleblower next week; however, the whistleblower has since walked away from that agreement and declined an attempted reschedule,” said Ryan Carey, spokesman for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat.
“Should the whistleblower wish to meet with the Senate Finance Committee, President Wyden’s staff is ready to arrange a meeting on terms that comply with laws that protect taxpayer data and ensure a fair and thorough investigation.”
The whistleblower’s legal team could not agree on a date for the testimony to the Senate Finance Committee, according to a person familiar with the conversations.
Evan Perez of CNN contributed to this story.
Source: CNN Brasil
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