IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley expressed hope that the incoming Trump administration will properly investigate the Biden administration’s Justice Department and the “malthesis” that permeated its investigations into Hunter Biden.
Shapley, one of two IRS whistleblowers who provided information on the investigation into Biden’s taxes, argued that President Joe Biden was correct in claiming that his son was “singled out” in his prosecution but that it stemmed from the president’s son getting “preferential treatment,” the latest example of which was a massive pardon. He also rebuked special counsel David Weiss’s claims that Hunter Biden’s charges should not be dismissed, accusing the Justice Department of attempting to make it appear that it is “still in the game” on legally pursuing Biden.
“Hopefully, when the new administration comes in and the new attorney general Bondi comes in, they’ll be looking into this,” Shapley said on Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle. “Maybe appoint a special counsel to investigate this special counsel, because that’s what’s needed because the level of malfeasance that occurred at every level from the attorney general Merrick Garland to David Weiss, the FBI to IRS leadership is just quite appalling.”
Shapley and his fellow IRS whistleblower, Joe Ziegler, released a joint statement Sunday night condemning the president’s pardon, stating that the world got to see the president “put his thumb on the scales of justice for his son.” Despite this, both deemed the pardon “a sad day for law-abiding taxpayers” who witnessed “special privilege for the powerful” enacted.
David Schoen, a former impeachment attorney for President-elect Donald Trump, also detailed a side effect of the pardon that could “backfire” — the president’s son now has lost his ability to plead the Fifth Amendment and remain silent. He added that one can expect a subpoena to be issued to Hunter Biden by either the House of Representatives or the Senate.
The other factor Schoen pointed to is whether the “broad” pardon “is valid,” as the range goes on for over a decade, warning that “someone could challenge this.”
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The loss of Hunter Biden’s ability to plead the Fifth has also been brought up by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who argued this may be an “unintended consequence” the president did not fully think through before granting the pardon. He also questioned whether the president would pardon his brother, James Biden, who was “up to his neck in the Biden family influence peddling operation.”
Meanwhile, outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) has said he understood why, “as a father,” Biden chose to pardon his son. However, he also believed the president should have granted a pardon to Trump as well, as doing so would have made it “a lot more balanced.”