Just the News: John Solomon interviews IRS whistleblower in Hunter Biden tax case

In a recent podcast interview, renowned investigative journalist and Just the News Editor-in-Chief John Solomon spoke with IRS agent Gary Shapley, the agent who blew the whistle last October on purported political tampering from the DOJ in relation to first son Hunter Biden’s tax evasion case.

Solomon, an award winning journalist who previously reported for the Associated Press, The Hill and served as Executive Editor for The Washington Times interviewed Shapley for Just the News in an exclusive interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast.

Did the Justice Department interfere in Hunter Biden’s IRS tax evasion case?

In his interview with Solomon, Shapely talked about how, after he reported concerns about the Justice Department interfering in the IRS tax evasion case against Hunter Biden, he and his team were removed from the investigation and he was subsequently passed over for a promotion.

“The actions taken by my leadership right now could be nothing but retaliation,” Shapley told Solomon.  “They know what prohibited personnel practices are, and they know how to how to try to engage in retaliatory activities that somehow you obfuscate that piece, whether it's a prohibited personnel practice.”

During the interview, Shapley revisited his earlier testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee, which was made public last week. The IRS whistleblower talked about specific government actions, which he saw as retaliatory, including the Justice Department’s decision to remove him and his team from the Hunter Biden case and being passed over for a promotion.

A special tax recovery project he was working on was also canceled.

Retaliation against whistleblowers

During the April 27 House Ways and Means Committee hearing, representatives asked IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel if he would commit to opposing retaliation against whistleblowers.

“I can say without hesitation, any hesitation, there will be no retaliation for anyone making an allegation,” the commissioner said.

Despite those words under oath, Shapley says he the government retaliated against him.

“I was passed over for a promotion for which I was clearly most qualified. The special agent in charge and assistant special agent in charge of the Washington, D.C. Field Office have sent threats to the field office, suppressing additional potential whistleblowers from coming forward,” he said during an interview, according to a transcript released by the congressional committee.

“Even after IRS CI senior leadership had been made aware on a recurring basis that the Delaware U.S. Attorney's Office and the Department of Justice was acting improperly, they acquiesced to a DOJ request to remove the entire team from the Hunter Biden investigation, a team that had been investigating it for over 5 years. Passing the buck and deferring to others was a common theme with IRS CI leadership during this investigation,” he added.

Negative repercussions for the American taxpayer

Shapely and his attorneys said some of the government’s actions aren't just retaliations, but could have negative impacts for American taxpayers.  

According to one of Shapely’s lawyers, the government’s decisions could hamper the IRS from recovering taxes owed that evaders are concealing from the United States.

“What kind of what kind of mentality is there when an agency is more interested in retaliating against Gary Shapley than they are in putting bad guys, you know, collecting taxes for the taxpayer from bad guys who aren't paying it,” Shapley’s lawyer, Jason Foster, told Just the News.

Shapley pointed to another case that he believes evidences retaliation against him over his claims related to Hunter Biden. He and his team got the case toward “phase one” after 120 nationwide interviews before it was suspended.

“They're not going to move forward with the phase one and it's really disconcerting that the AUSAs [Assistant United States Attorneys] working the case are questioning whether or not it's retaliation because of what's going on. So there's just a lot of things moving in the background that support the fact that this is just retaliation,” he explained.

U.S. House Republicans seek interviews with investigators who probed Hunter Biden

As a result of Shapley’s released interview transcript, House Republican congressional leaders are now hoping to interview investigators who actually worked on the Hunter Biden case.

The House leaders wrote to IRS, Justice Department and U.S. Secret Service leaders to notice them of their requests for interviews.

Shapley’s credibility has been praised by some prominent Republicans.

Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said he believes Shapley is a strong witness.

“This is the best whistleblower in modern history that I've seen,” he said during a Just the News Not Noise TV program. “This guy came prepared. I mean, he had all the goods. He did it exactly the right way and I mean, look, this is the biggest corruption scandal in politics in history. I mean, some $40 million that's moving around.”

As Shapley continues to make his allegations about government mismanagement and retaliation, Hunter Biden’s legal team has taken aim at the agent, saying his actions of coming forward were inappropriate.

Hunter Biden’s legal team strikes back

Hunter Biden attorney Abbe Lowell wrote to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith alleging that Shapley and the other agent who came forward did so “in an attempt to evade their own misconduct.”

The “timing of the agents’ leaks and your subsequent decision to release their statements do not seem innocent,” Lowell said, insinuating their move was also part of a media campaign to create confusion.

Lowell added that Rep. Smith leaked the transcripts to the interviews to “feed the misinformation campaign to harm our client, Hunter Biden, as a vehicle to attack his father.”

Shapley's attorneys denied that allegation and said their client’s actions were proper.

“All the innuendo and bluster that Biden family lawyers can summon will not change the facts,” they responded in a statement.

“Lawful whistleblowing is the opposite of illegal leaking, and these bogus accusations against SSA Shapley by lawyers for the Biden family echo threatening emails sent by IRS leadership after the case agent also blew the whistle to the IRS Commissioner about favoritism in this case—as well as the chilling report that Biden attorneys have also lobbied the Biden Justice Department directly to target our client with criminal inquiry in further retaliation for blowing the whistle.”

John Solomon: The award winning investigative journalist behind the interview

John Solomon is a nationally recognized, award winning investigative journalist who won the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. A graduate of Marquette University, Solomon spent two decades working with the Associated Press from 1987 to 2006 where he served as the wire service’s Washington assistant bureau chief and also broke award winning stories about the April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing.

In 2007, he served as a national investigative correspondent for The Washington Post, served as a resident journalist at the Center for Public Integrity from 2010-2011 and took over as Executive Editor for The Washington Times from 2013-2015.

After a brief lead role at Circa in 2016, he joined The Hill in 2017 where he broke record stories about the Uranium One controversy, suggesting Russia made payments to the Clinton Foundation at a time when the Obama administration approved the sale of Uranium One to Rosatom. He also reported on Russian and U.S. political activities related to Ukraine.

In January 2020, after he left The Hill in 2019, he launched his own investigative news operation, Just the News.

Solomon’s award winning career took off in 1992 when he won the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Raymond Clapper Memorial Award for a series about presidential candidate Ross Perot, and later the 2002 Associated Press’ Managing Editors Enterprise Reporting Award for stories about what the FBI knew before the Sept. 11 attacks, and the Gramling Journalism Achievement Award for his coverage of the war on terrorism,

He was also the recipient of the Society of Professional Journalists’ National Investigative Award, which he won together with CBS News’ for 60 Minutes production of “Evidence of Injustice.”