Free Republic

The acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was replaced Friday, only three days after assuming the role, as his appointment triggered a power struggle between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Elon Musk of the Department of Government Efficiency, the New York Times reported. Gary Shapley was replaced after Bessent complained to President Donald Trump that Musk circumvented Bessent’s office to secure the position for Shapley, the NYT reported. The outlet cited people who said they were familiar with the situation. Shapley was a longstanding IRS agent who accused the Biden administration’s Department of Justice of dragging out its...

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Tuesday that two Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblowers who faced political persecution over their roles in the tax evasion investigation of Hunter Biden will return to the agency as advisers. Bessent said that Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler will join the Treasury Department as senior advisers after they were wrongfully targeted for their role in the investigation. Shapley was a senior supervisory special agent at the IRS, while Ziegler was a special agent. "I went and decided I would bring them into Treasury, give them a year to investigate the wrongdoing that's going on at...

The two IRS agents who blew the whistle on the Hunter Biden tax investigation and significantly altered the course of the case, on Friday night sued the first son’s lawyer Abbe Lowell for defamation. The two whistleblowers, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, are suing for libel because of the alleged damage done to their careers, and are requesting a jury trial in Washington, D.C. The whistleblowers originally brought concerns to the House Ways and Means Committee that the Justice Department had provided preferential treatment to Biden during a probe into his alleged tax violations. Shapley and Ziegler alleged in Friday's...

It seems that every thread the House Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means Committees pull reveals yet another tangled web of incompetence, if not outright corruption, in our federal government. Add the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) to the list of suspect agencies now. On Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) joined with the chairs of the Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means Committees (James Comer (R-KY), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Jason Smith (R-MO)) to direct a letter to Karen Gorman, Acting Principal Deputy Special Counsel for the OSC, inquiring into actions taken by...

WASHINGTON (TND) — Hunter Biden claimed he was all out of money in December 2018, according to text messages revealed in new IRS whistleblower documents. The documents were released by the House Committee on Ways and Means Wednesday. In the exchange, Hunter was writing to his uncle, James Biden. "I can work when I’m in NYC all day every day for the next 3 months from 8-12z [sic] But I can’t pay alimony w/o Dad or tuitions or food and gas,” Hunter wrote. “Really it’s all gone.” Hunter went on to say that his dad, now President Joe Biden, "basically...

FIRST ON FOX: The former assistant U.S. attorney who allegedly worked to ‘limit’ questions about Joe Biden denied that politics played a role in the Hunter Biden investigation during her interview at the House Judiciary Committee, according to a transcript reviewed by Fox News Digital. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf, though, testified that she would "not be permitted to answer most of the questions you have for me" due to the ongoing nature of the federal criminal investigation into the first son. Wolf, who recently left the Justice Department—a decision that "long predated" allegations against her, was subpoenaed by...

IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler were not able to confirm to congress the supposed loans Joe Biden sent his family members after his vice presidency concluded. Both IRS agents testified Dec. 5 in front of the House Ways and Means Committee and neither could “verify” the existence of loans between Joe Biden and his family members when he was out of office, according to a newly released transcript of the whistleblower testimony. FULL TESTIMONY TRANSCRIPT: SCRIBD PDF AT LINK...................... “So Joe Biden is being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for, quote, ‘repayments’ to him of loans that...

Bombshell new records released by the House Ways & Means Committee have revealed that Joe Biden used email aliases to speak with his son’s business associates hundreds of times while in office as Obama’s vice president. The Republican-led committee obtained metadata from IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler. The metadata reveals Joe Biden used alias email accounts 327 times during a nine-year period from 2010 to 2019 to discuss shady foreign business deals. He used the email aliases to correspond with his son, Hunter, and one of Hunter’s key business associates, Eric Schwerin, among others. The vast majority of...

A mere 16 days after Joe Biden assumed the presidency, top officials in his Justice Department raised suspicion among career IRS agents by demanding a briefing on the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden, according to evidence turned over to Congress that raises new questions about Attorney General Merrick Garland's claims of an interference-free probe. The Feb. 5, 2021 meeting between U.S. Attorney David Weiss' office in Delaware and a some of Biden's new assistant attorneys general in DOJ's Washington headquarters was chronicled in email exchanges between federal prosecutors and IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler. Weiss was leading the...

In an unexpected development, a third IRS agent who worked on the Hunter Biden case has come forward. In closed-door testimony that took place on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Michael Batdorf testified that U.S. Attorney David Weiss faced roadblocks from the DOJ in charging the president's troubled son.A third IRS official confirmed that Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss faced roadblocks when attempting to bring charges against Hunter Biden, contradicting denials issued Wednesday by Attorney General Merrick Garland.IRS Director of Field Operations Michael Batdorf told the House Ways and Means Committee in a closed-door interview on Sept. 12 that he felt...

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., caused a stir when she held up several graphic photos from Hunter Biden’s laptop during a committee hearing Wednesday with IRS whistleblowers alleging misconduct in investigations into the Biden family.

WASHINGTON — IRS agent Joseph Ziegler stepped forward Wednesday as the second whistleblower alleging a coverup in the criminal investigation of President Biden’s son Hunter — calling himself a Democrat who wanted “to do what is right.” Ziegler worked on the investigation since it opened in 2018 and was joined by his supervisory agent Gary Shapley, who oversaw the probe since January 2020, at a House Oversight Committee hearing. “I was the lead IRS case agent on the Hunter Biden investigation. I recently discovered that people are saying that I must be more credible because I’m a Democrat who happens...