Does the United States of America have a two-tiered justice system? Are certain people above the law due to their political affiliations? Has corruption become an acceptable or at least tolerated practice? If what two IRS whistleblowers told the House Oversight Committee on July 19 is true, then the answer to each of those questions is a resounding yes. The Republican-led probe into Hunter Biden and the Biden family’s alleged influence-peddling and bribery schemes has now amassed a quantity of evidence that simply cannot be ignored.
Former president Donald Trump was impeached twice for far less. He has been indicted for lesser alleged offenses. Yet, according to IRS Special Agent Gary Shapley – who has a truly impressive record – the way the Delaware US Attorney’s Office and the Department of Justice (DOJ) handled the Hunter Biden tax investigation “was very different from any other case in my 14 years at the IRS.”
Hunter Biden and Friends in High Places
Shapley revealed to the committee that “warrants that were ready as early as April of 2020, but were delayed until after the November 2020 election and never pursued.” The IRS official described a pattern of slow-walking the Hunter Biden probe and said, “At every stage, decisions were made that benefitted the subject of this investigation.”
Shapley also confirmed that Matthew Graves, the US attorney for Washington, DC, who donated to President Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign and was appointed by Joe Biden, “refused to bring charges” against Hunter Biden.
Democrats on the committee predictably demonstrated their disdain for the entire probe into the Biden family rackets – a curious display coming from the same people who, during the Trump presidency, claimed that Congress had a sacred duty to hold the executive branch accountable. Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) summed up what appears to be the new stance of his party; that the administrative state is now the ultimate power. During his allotted time, Mfume claimed that the FBI, the IRS, and the Department of Justice “keep this democracy in check.” He further claimed he and his colleagues provide the checks and balances.
Supervisory IRS Special Agent Gary Shapley and IRS Criminal Investigator Joseph Ziegler (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Back in the real world, IRS Special Agent Joseph Ziegler explained that, between 2014 and 2019, Hunter Biden and his business associates raked in more than $17 million for the Biden family from foreign entities.
Those payments included $7.3 million from Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings. Hunter Biden had been given a very lucrative directorship with Burisma. A senior executive with the company told a trusted FBI source that they had hoped to shut down an investigation into the company by Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. Sometime later, then-Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine and threatened to withhold a billion dollars in loan guarantees unless Shokin was fired – which he eventually was.
The big question is, at what point does the evidence – and there is a mountain of it – justify grand jury indictments? Democrats claim the entire probe into the Biden family is being conducted for political reasons and without any hard evidence. The threat to the integrity of the US legal system – and, by extension, the US Constitution – is this: Proof and evidence are not the same thing. Evidence, however, must be examined and verified to establish proof of guilt – and if that fails, then innocence is presumed. When federal investigators and prosecutors are not even allowed to examine the evidence because the subject of the investigation has the favored political associations, then justice becomes a joke. If there really are no crimes and no corruption here, then a thorough investigation of the evidence will ultimately prove this.
Neither Hunter Biden nor his father nor the Democratic Party has anything to fear from a full and unhindered examination of all the evidence if there is no crime. The level of resistance to this examination can only continue to fuel suspicion among the American people that crimes were indeed committed, and that corruption was being practiced on a large scale. And the American people – not the DOJ, the IRS, or the FBI – are supposed to provide the ultimate checks and balances.
