Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers now claim that the Justice Department, the FBI and top IRS officials ordered them not to investigate President Biden or his son, Hunter Biden, at the following the disclosure of the first son’s laptop before the investigation. the 2020 presidential election because the Bidens were considered “sensitive” people deserving special protections during the investigation. Republicans have long sought information about the laptop and its contents, and the device helped secure two criminal convictions for Biden in recent months.

In a meeting with independent journalist Catherine Herridge, IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler say their bosses acted wrongly. interfered in the investigation despite the fact that they “knew” the laptop was real “several months” before it was reported by the New York Post in October 2020.

“There were a lot of obvious investigative steps that we weren’t allowed to take because we had an investigation coming up,” Mr. Ziegler says.

“This was several months before October 2020. We were confirming aspects of it that it was real and legitimate, as early as late 2019,” Mr. Shapley said of the laptop. “It was clear that a campaign had been carried out to discredit this information before the election. In the end, I guess you can conclude that it was in order to influence this election.

The House Judiciary Committee, which investigated the Biden family, its business dealings, the laptop and alleged interference in law enforcement investigations into the entire affair, called the report Ms. Herridge of “HUGE BREAKING NEWS” Tuesday. The committee’s chairman, Congressman Jim Jordan, said: “This has always been a cover-up. »

One of the most salacious emails extracted from Biden’s infamous laptop was a detailed description of how revenue from a certain deal would be split, with ten percent listed as a payment for someone only disclosed as ” the big guy,” which many have alleged the president did — including whistleblowers who investigated. “We corroborated that the ‘big guy’ was Joe Biden,” Shapley said.

Ms. Herridge reveals IRS bosses emailed officials who investigated Biden shortly after first son pleaded guilty to tax charges in California in September. The first son has denied any wrongdoing in the case, but says he pleaded guilty in order to keep embarrassing details about his life out of the headlines for the sake of his family.

“These are comments that are not supported by the agency’s actions,” Mr. Shapley said of the email sent by his bosses that praised investigators for helping Biden plead guilty.

Mr. Shapley added that he is aware that an “IRS watchdog” is “looking at the way they handled this and seeing what’s on the wall.”

Mr. Ziegler spoke about what are called “sensitive investigations” within the department, which include special protections for certain officials who are under investigation by the IRS.

The sensitive investigation that Mr. Ziegler is talking about is defined in Part Nine, Chapter Four, Section One of the IRS Employee and Investigator Handbook. Some of the officials and entities classified as “sensitive” include all currently serving federal elected officials, sitting federal judges, and serving senior executive officials, as well as elected officials and judges holding high-ranking state positions. . .

Why Biden was treated as a “sensitive” person in his own investigation does not appear to fit the IRS playbook, given that Biden was neither an elected official nor a judge at any level at the time of the investigation. investigation, nor his father. The IRS manual makes no mention of retired senior officials, which was the president’s status as a private citizen running for president in 2020.

The stories about the laptop were quickly dismissed by former intelligence, military and diplomatic officials in an open letter first reported by Politico in 2020. These 51 retired officials said that the laptop disclosure showed warning signs of a Russian influence operation, without having to say so. any evidence of such allegations. President Obama’s acting CIA director, Mike Morell, said in a interview with a House panel in 2023, it was Secretary Blinken – a signatory to the letter who was, at the time, a senior foreign policy advisor for the Biden 2020 campaign – “rushed” the release of the letter in order to refute the laptop disclosure.

Both whistleblowers also criticized Special Counsel Jack Smith who, with the permission of Judge Tanya Chutkan, was able to disclose sensitive information about the federal election interference lawsuit Mr. Smith is now pursuing against President Trump .

Ms. Herridge held up a copy of the evidence filed by Judge Chutkan just weeks before the 2024 election, which whistleblowers say would not have happened if Trump’s last name was Biden.

“Based on what we saw in the Hunter Biden case, this document would never have been released four weeks before an election,” Mr. Shapley says.