CNN
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A 14-year veteran of the Internal Revenue Service went public for the first time Wednesday as the whistleblower who claimed to have information about alleged mismanagement and political interference in an ongoing criminal investigation into Hunter Biden.
Gary Shapley, who was recently removed from a Justice Department investigation, spoke to CBS Evening News before a scheduled meeting of the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday.
“There are a lot of slow-moving steps — none at all — in the direction of the Justice Department,” Shapley told CBS News chief investigative correspondent Jim Axelrod in an interview Tuesday. “When I took control of this particular investigation, I immediately saw deviations from the normal process. It was beyond what I had experienced before.”
“For several years, we have noticed these deviations in the investigation process. And I really can’t, you know, that the DOJ could be acting poorly on this,” he added.
Shapley told CBS News he was concerned about how federal prosecutors are handling “a high-profile, controversial” investigation. Several sources previously confirmed to CNN that the man at the center of the investigation is Hunter Biden.
In a letter to a federal watchdog agency this month, Shapley’s lawyers said he first raised concerns about “irregularities” in how the Justice Department handled the case in the summer of 2020. during the Trump administration. Shapley said he continued to voice his concerns about the case in subsequent years under the Biden administration.
A spokeswoman for the US Attorney’s Office in Delaware, which is handling the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden, declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for the Justice Department. The IRS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shapley admitted he didn’t blow the whistle for political reasons, telling CBS he was “not involved in anything,” adding: “This is not what I want to do. I’m just not a political person. This a job, and my oath of office is to treat everyone we investigate fairly.
A tense meeting in October 2022, Shapley told CBS, was his “red-line meeting,” saying it “just got to the point where the switch was turned on, and I couldn’t silence the my conscience.”
Federal prosecutors have spent years, spanning three attorneys general, investigating Hunter Biden and considering bringing charges against the president’s son for alleged tax crimes and a false statement, as previously reported by CNN. To date, no charges have been filed, and Hunter Biden has denied wrongdoing.
Shapley’s attorneys had hoped their client could sit for a joint interview with the House and Senate committees, and recently expressed disappointment that a bicameral interview was not completed.
On Wednesday, a Senate Finance Committee aide said the whistleblower team had withdrawn from the panel meeting.
“Committee staff on both sides agreed to counsel meeting directly with the whistleblower next week, however the whistleblower has since backed out of that agreement and refused to try to reschedule,” said Ryan Carey, spokesman for Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat. “If the whistleblower wishes to meet with the Senate Finance Committee, Chairman Wyden’s staff is prepared to arrange a meeting on terms that comply with laws that protect taxpayer data and ensure a fair and rigorous investigation.”
The whistleblower’s legal team has not yet agreed on a date for an interview with the Senate Finance Committee, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
