BREITBART
House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) demanded documents from the Justice Department on Friday related to allegations that the department retaliated against an IRS whistleblower investigating Hunter Biden.
“The timing of the Department’s removal of the agent and investigative team raises serious concerns given that the investigation was the subject of the agent’s protected whistleblower disclosure,” Jordan wrote.
Read a copy of the letter below:
The letter comes in response to attorneys for the supervisory special agent, who later revealed his identity in a CBS interview as 14-year IRS veteran Gary Shapley, asking Congress to investigate Shapley’s removal from the case as potential unlawful whistleblower retaliation.
Shapley told CBS that he had been assigned to a “high-profile investigation” in January 2020, which Breitbart News confirmed from a source familiar is related to a years-long federal probe into Hunter Biden’s taxes.
Shapley is being represented by Empower Oversight, a firm launched by former Republican aides that works to protect whistleblowers. Empower Oversight alerted Congress on May 15 that Shapley and the rest of his investigative team had been removed from the case at the direction of the Justice Department, according to a letter obtained by Breitbart News.
Empower Oversight contended the move was “clearly retaliatory” and that it stood in contrast to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel recently vowing before Congress not to take such measures against whistleblowers.
Shapley said he observed “multiple steps that were slow-walked at the direction of this Department of Justice” and that “deviations from normal process” seemed to “always benefit the subject” of the investigation.
It remains unclear why Shapley and his team were taken off the Hunter Biden case, and the Justice Department declined to comment on the matter.
Jordan wrote that his committee would “not tolerate the Department’s retaliatory conduct against this or any other whistleblower.”
He asked that Garland respond to him by June 8 with the requested documents and communications.
