Whistleblower in IRS Hunter Biden probe says tax agency 'deviated from the normal process' in favor of Biden son

An Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower, Gary Shapley, spoke publicly for the first time Tuesday with CBS Evening News. He recently claimed that the Department of Justice gave special treatment in a highly sensitive political probe. 

According to CBS, they determined that the subject of the allegation is President Biden's son Hunter Biden, who is being investigated for tax evasion. Shapely said he could not “confirm or deny the subject of this investigation” because of “tax secrecy laws that don’t allow it.” 

Shapley told CBS, “There were multiple steps that were slow-walked, at the direction of the Department of Justice.” He continued, “When I took control of this particular investigation, I immediately saw deviations from the normal process. It was way outside the norm of what I’ve experienced in the past… each and every time they seemed to always benefit the subject.” 

“It just got to that point where that switch was turned on, and I couldn't silence my conscience anymore,” he said. "For a couple of years, we'd been noticing these deviations in the investigative process. And I just couldn't, you know, fathom that DOJ might be acting unethically on this."

Through his lawyer Mark Lytle, Shapley first came forward in April. In a letter to members of the Senate Finance and Judiciary committees, as well as the House Judiciary and Ways and Means committees, Lytle wrote, "My client is offering to provide you with information necessary to exercise your constitutional oversight function and wishes to make the disclosures in a non-partisan manner to the leadership of the relevant committees on both sides of the political aisle."

Lytle said that Shapley had made legally protected disclosures internally at the IRS. The disclosures "contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee,” the letter said, "involve a failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case," and detailed “examples of preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected."

Last week, the IRS informed Shapley that at the direction of the Department of Justice, “he and his entire investigative team are being removed from the ongoing and sensitive investigation of the high-profile, controversial subject about which our client sought to make whistleblower disclosures to Congress," lawyers Mark Lytle and Tristan Leavitt wrote. In a move they said was “clearly retaliatory.”