Home Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) demanded paperwork from the Justice Division on Friday associated to allegations that the division retaliated in opposition to an IRS whistleblower investigating Hunter Biden.
Jordan informed Legal professional Common Merrick Garland in a letter obtained by Breitbart Information that he’s in search of details about the removing of an “IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent and investigative team” from a “‘high-profile, controversial’ ongoing investigation.”
“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.
Learn a replica of the letter under:
The letter is available in response to attorneys for the supervisory particular agent, who later revealed his id in a CBS interview as 14-year IRS veteran Gary Shapley, asking Congress to analyze Shapley’s removing from the case as potential illegal whistleblower retaliation.
Shapley informed CBS that he had been assigned to a “high-profile investigation” in January 2020, which Breitbart Information confirmed from a supply acquainted is said to a years-long federal probe into Hunter Biden’s taxes.
Shapley is being represented by Empower Oversight. The agency, launched by former Republican aides, alerted Congress on Could 15 that Shapley and the remainder of his investigative workforce had been faraway from the case on the route of the Justice Division, in line with a letter obtained by Breitbart Information.
Empower Oversight contended the transfer was “clearly retaliatory” and that it stood in distinction to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel not too long ago vowing earlier than Congress to not take such measures in opposition to whistleblowers.
Shapley alleged within the CBS interview that when he started investigating Hunter Biden, he “immediately saw it was way outside the norm.”
Shapley mentioned he noticed “multiple steps that were slow-walked at the direction of this Department of Justice” and that “deviations from normal process” appeared to “always benefit the subject” of the investigation.
It stays unclear why Shapley and his workforce have been taken off the Hunter Biden case, and the Justice Division didn’t instantly reply to Breitbart Information’s request for remark.
Jordan wrote that his committee would “not tolerate the Department’s retaliatory conduct against this or any other whistleblower.”
He requested that Garland reply to him by June 8 with the requested paperwork and communications.
The letter comes the identical day Shapley is ready to testify behind closed doorways with the Home Methods and Means Committee, which is conducting a concurrent probe into the IRS’s dealing with of the whistleblower allegations and subsequent alleged retaliation.
Write to Ashley Oliver at [email protected]. Comply with her on Twitter at @asholiver.
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