IRS Whistleblowers and D.C. Rot

BOOM! THE FEDERALIST has a wise article here:

The former chief of the Justice Department’s tax division is calling on the federal judge overseeing Hunter Biden’s plea bargain with U.S. prosecutors to reject the agreement.

Eileen O’Connor, who ran the DOJ tax division from 2001 to 2007, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday outlining why the plea agreement Hunter Biden struck with the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office ought to be dismissed.

“Judges can reject plea agreements,” O’Connor wrote. “That would be an appropriate disposition here.”

[….]

Federal prosecutors also concealed the FD-1023 form housed with the FBI that alleged a criminal bribery scheme between the Biden family and a Ukrainian energy titan……….

The discovery of a secret Joe Biden cellphone paid for by Hunter Biden’s Communist China-connected business, and new confirmation that Joe is indeed “the big guy” designated for a piece of Hunter’s shady overseas profits are developments that may imperil the Biden presidency, Peter Schweizer says in the latest episode of The Drill Down podcast.

THE FEDERALIST notes that the below testimony by Shapely is only the “dust-bunnies” of the real dirt [my words… we have all tile in our home so the dust bunnies come out to visit. Often.] This is the key part of their article:

  • And while corruption in the vastly left-leaning bureaucracy almost always benefits Democrats, the problem goes beyond partisan politics.

And this goes to “leaks” as well. Why do the leaks almost always help Democrats push narratives? At any rate, “enjoy” the below.

Following the sensational whistleblower testimony that dropped Thursday, revealing how the Department of Justice systematically blocked an IRS investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter and diverted agents from examining the incriminating evidence against his presidential father, House Republicans are threatening the overdue impeachment of Attorney General Merrick Garland — except most of the pro-Biden interference in the DOJ happened before Garland was installed, while President Donald Trump was still in office.

Does Garland still deserve impeachment for his assortment of abuses, such as sitting on his hands to avoid real accountability for the younger Biden (and his pop), while weaponizing the country’s top law enforcement agency to try to send Biden’s top presidential challenger to federal prison? Absolutely. Is it smart politically for Kevin McCarthy to use the current momentum to hold Garland to account? Probably. Is the alleged involvement in a foreign bribery scheme enough to merit Biden’s own impeachment? Most definitely.

[….]

After IRS agents discovered a WhatsApp message in which Hunter Biden purportedly threatened a Chinese business associate that “I am sitting here with my father” and that the Bidens could “hold a grudge” if a “commitment made” to them was not “fulfilled,” federal prosecutors rejected IRS efforts to look into the messages. That was around August 2020, when Trump had nearly half a year left in the White House.

In October 2020, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf acknowledged “probable cause had been achieved” for executing a search warrant on Hunter Biden but still refused to allow a search. In the meantime, the DOJ continued to block IRS investigators from accessing the laptop and openly cited the investigation’s potential to hurt Biden’s electoral chances as their reason for slow-walking it.

Wolf would also order IRS investigators not to ask about “dad” or about an email stating there would be “Ten held by H for the big guy.” That happened in December, more than a month before Biden’s inauguration.

That same month, IRS and FBI investigators planned to seek a consent search of Hunter Biden’s residence and interviews with Hunter and his associates, since the search warrant had been rejected. “FBI headquarters,” Shapley said, apparently notified the transition team of the plan, a move which “tipped off” the Bidens’ inner circle. Of the 12 interviews investigators sought, they got one.

All of that happened under Trump and his attorney general, William Barr. That’s not to make the absurd suggestion that it happened at Trump or Barr’s direction. Rather, it shows how monstrous the triple-letter leviathan and its grip on our political process are. The regime, the deep state, the bureaucracy, whatever you want to call it: Shapley’s testimony shows their ability to manipulate political outcomes is so entrenched that their own elected overseers are powerless to stop it.

Unsurprisingly, as Shapley noted, “This same sort of unprecedented behavior continued through” Joe Biden’s first year in the White House. When IRS agents finally sent their recommended charges against Hunter Biden to the DOJ, the agency — by then under Attorney General Merrick Garland — opposed the recommendation. Based on the deal offered to Hunter Biden last week, we know the DOJ dropped most of the charges. Shapley also testified that he has been subject to retaliation from the DOJ since speaking out…..

(READ IT ALL)

Gary Shapley IRS Whistleblower Part I

Gary Shapley IRS Whistleblower Part 2

The below Tweeted videos is via DAILY WIRE:

Who was one of the main “road bumps to the investigation that stymied Shapely? Lesley Wolf

Jim Jordan wants to speak to this “agent” of disruption! The DAILY CALLER has a bit more:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf of Delaware, accused of stonewalling federal agents building a criminal case against Hunter Biden, is a lifelong Democrat who previously worked for a major liberal law firm.

Wolf, who began working as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Delaware District in 2006, told Biden and his attorneys that IRS agents wanted to search his storage locker in northern Virginia, IRS agent Gary Shapley and another whistleblower testified. She also allegedly shut down agents’ proposal to search a guesthouse on Joe Biden’s Delaware property where Hunter had been living off and on, and participated in a meeting where attorneys suggested departures from Justice Department protocol.

Before joining the DOJ, Wolf clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Anita Brody, a George H.W. Bush appointee. She also worked as an associate at corporate law firm Ropes & Gray. Ninety-one percent of the firm’s political donations went to Democrats between 2017 and 2020, University of Iowa law professor Derek Muller found, making it the 39th-most liberal of the 100 biggest law firms in the country.

[….]

IRS Supervisory Agent Gary Shapley and another whistleblower named Wolf as the DOJ official who stonewalled investigations into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings. According to their testimonies, Wolf denied requests to search a Northern Virginia storage locker belonging to Hunter Biden. She then allegedly alerted Biden’s attorneys that federal agents were eyeing the property, allowing him the opportunity to move evidence.

After agents viewed a text exchange showing Hunter Biden apparently threatening a Chinese businessman, they sought to search Joe Biden’s home in Delaware, where Hunter was then staying. Wolf again demurred, questioning “whether the juice was worth the squeeze,” according to Shapley. She also said that “optics” were against the search, the agent testified…..

The WASHINGTON FREE BEACON reminds us of other deep state corruption shown to be more lies to cover up for Democrats crimes:

….Morell recruited 50 former intelligence officials to sign the now infamous letter, which asserted the release of the younger Biden’s emails days earlier “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The missive, published by Politico, spurred public doubt about the authenticity of the laptop, which contained details of his foreign business dealings and taxes. Joe Biden cited the intel letter in his debate with Donald Trump days later, calling it a “Russian ruse.”

But unbeknownst to those operatives, the FBI had authenticated the laptop nearly a year earlier, according to Shapley.

Shapley, who oversaw an IRS investigation into Hunter Biden, told the House Ways and Means Committee that FBI agents authenticated Hunter Biden’s laptop in November 2019 and turned it over to the IRS the following month because it “likely contained evidence of a tax crime.” That claim was supported last week after the U.S. attorney in Delaware charged Hunter Biden on charges he failed to pay taxes on more than $3 million in income.

According to Shapley, the FBI obtained electronic evidence that placed Hunter Biden in the vicinity of the repair shop where he allegedly left his computer for repairs in April 2019. Hunter Biden has suggested that he may not have dropped the laptop off for repairs and that it may have been stolen, perhaps by Russians.

Shapley also testified that FBI investigators found no evidence that information on Hunter Biden’s laptop was manipulated or altered. “We have no reason to believe there is anything fabricated nefariously on the computer and or hard drive,” Shapley wrote in an Oct. 22, 2020, memo he gave the House Ways and Means Committee.

Morell and Shapiro have yet to weigh in on Shapley’s claims. They did not respond to requests for comment. Bates, who served as the Biden campaign’s rapid response director, did not respond to requests for comment. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment about Blinken’s views of Shapley’s testimony……

IRS Whistleblowers Start to Speak Out, Publicly

Hat-tip to OFF THE PRESS:

  • A decorated IRS agent provided Congress six hours of testimony and seven critical documents Friday that gave lawmakers insights into the origins of the Hunter Biden criminal tax probe and evidence of political interference inside the Justice Department dating to the 2020 election.
  • Gary Shapley, an IRS supervisory criminal investigator granted whistleblower status, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, fielding questions from staff from Democrat and Republican lawmakers, his legal team announced.
  • Sources familiar with the session told Just the News that Shapley turned over seven documents totaling 23 pages that summarized the evidence and predicate for the original investigation into the taxes and overseas finances of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son.

(Via JUST THE NEWS)

A whistleblower from inside the Internal Revenue Service has spoken publicly for the first time about a highly sensitive political probe he has supervised, which CBS News has determined is the ongoing probe into the finances of President Biden’s son Hunter Biden. He said he became so concerned about prosecutors’ handling of “a high profile, controversial” investigation that he felt duty-bound to sound alarms. “There were multiple steps that were slow-walked — were just completely not done — at the direction of the Department of Justice,” said Gary Shapley, a 14-year veteran of the agency, who spoke exclusively to CBS News chief investigative correspondent Jim Axelrod on Tuesday. “When I took control of this particular investigation, I immediately saw deviations from the normal process. It was way outside the norm of what I’ve experienced in the past.”…..

ANOTHER Hunter Biden IRS Whistleblower Comes Forward, Says Hunter Biden Got Special Treatment

If it’s not on corporate mainstream fake news disinformation media it’s got to be true

It Isn’t Right vs. Left – It’s Elites vs. Outsiders (Gutfeld)

GUTFELD SHOW

THE FIVE!

TO WIT…

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, joins ‘The Evening Edit’ to discuss the ‘hard deadline’ he has given the IRS to turn over documents and communications pertaining to ‘Twitter Files’ journalist Matt Taibbi.

‘The Five’ co-hosts react to Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi’s ‘unannounced’ timed run-in with the IRS just before his testimony before Congress.

 

Obama Scandals and Impeachment

With Trump’s impeachment trial underway, Larry decides to look back at two scandals from Barack Obama’s presidency: the IRS and Fast & Furious scandals. Larry discusses whether these incidents were impeachable or not.

Professor John Eastman Discusses Trump’s Taxes and the Courts

Larry Elder asks professor John C. Eastman (Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service at Chapman University Fowler School of Law) about Trump’s use of Executive Privilege and then discussion of U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta saying Trump must turn over his taxes.

Democrats Weaponize the IRS… Again

Dr. John Eastman was on Larry Elder’s show discussing the Democrats wanting Trump’s tax returns. Much like Mitch McConnell warning about “shoes on other’s feet,” the Democrats should tread lightly… because IF this passes Constitutional muster, Trump can order tax returns to be released as well. Good insights from the professor as usual.

Obama Presidency Scandal Free? >>>>Cue Laughter

Larry Elder plays a great refutation of Valerie Jarrett’s assertion that the Obama administration was scandal free. In fact, this  claim is demonstrably false, as THE DAILY WIRE highlights, here are four of their thirteen (with inserted media) — BREITBART lists eighteen:

1. Operation Fast and Furious. This egregious example of a reckless government endangering lives and then scrambling to cover it up has haunted Obama for years. As Daily Wire has explained, “Operation Fast and Furious involved the Obama administration arming drug cartels and thugs south of the border as a means to undermine the Second Amendment. The program resulted in the death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. One of the Islamic terrorists in the Garland, Texas, attack also used a gun that was obtained through the Fast and Furious program.”…

2. Benghazi. The terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya resulted in four brave Americans dying despite the fact that help could have been sent, but wasn’t. Requests for security prior to the attack were repeatedly denied, and after the attack Obama and Hillary Clinton falsely blamed it on a video considered offensive to Muslims. During the election, Benghazi became associated with Clinton—and rightly so—but it is also Obama’s scandal as well. It is still not known what Obama was doing that night.

3. The IRS targeted conservative organizations. In 2013, Lois Lerner, who directed the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organizations Unit, admitted that Tea Party organizations were targeted under the agency, but blamed it on lower-level employees. Such organizations were heavily scrutinized with invasive questions. Since then, Lerner and IRS commissioner John Koskinen have denied any wrongdoing and have stonewalled congressional efforts to investigate the matter, citing computer crashes for being unable to turn over related emails.

Meanwhile, a federal court concluded in August that conservative groups might still be facing targeted scrutiny from the IRS. It has also been reported that the Department of Justice (DOJ) knew about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups as early as 2011.

The use of the IRS to punish political opponents is a proud Democrat tradition:

The first step of Johnson’s climb to power was accomplished by cheating during the 1948 Senate race in Texas, when he “miraculously” won the election by only eighty-seven votes.

Johnson’s dishonesty and ruthlessness were chronicled in 1964 by J. Evetts Haley in his book A Texan Looks at Lyndon as Johnson was facing Barry Goldwater in the upcoming presidential election in November of that year. Haley’s book was roundly trashed by liberals, who claimed he had gotten his facts all wrong, but decades later, after all the damage was already done to our culture, liberal historians like Robert Caro confirmed that Johnson did indeed steal his 1948 election by having his operatives stuff Ballot Box 13 with fake votes. He was called “Landslide Lyndon” for having “won” the election by only eighty-seven votes.

While in the Senate and running for reelection in 1954, Johnson faced criticism from two anti-Communist nonprofit groups that were educating the public about his liberal views. In retaliation for this attack, Johnson managed to insert language into the IRS Code that prohibits nonprofits, including churches, from endorsing or opposing candidates for political office. In effect, this corrupt man used the power of the IRS to silence his opposition. From that time forward and to the detriment of American society, the churches became less involved in public life and were too often unwilling to speak out on moral issues. Johnson would not be the last to use the IRS to silence opponents. President Obama’s operatives used the IRS to silence opposition at a level that could make an opportunist like Lyndon Johnson blush.

William J, Murray, Utopian Road to Hell: Enslaving America and the World With Central Planning (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2016), 158-159.

4. The DOJ seized Associated Press phone records as well as phone and email records from Fox News reporter James Rosen. In the AP’s case, the DOJ was investigating a story involving “a CIA operation in Yemen that foiled an al-Qaeda plot in the spring of 2012 to set off a bomb on an airplane headed to the United States,” according to the Washington Post. The DOJ seized two months of phone records from the AP without informing the news outlet. …

In the Rosen case, the DOJ was investigating a story Rosen did involving North Korea and tracked “his movements and conversations,” according to Fox News, including phone numbers belonging to Rosen’s parents. The DOJ had listed Rosen as a “co-conspirator” under the Espionage Act in regards to the story—allegedly pressing a source for classified information. Rosen was never charged with a crime….

Kimberley Strassell Interviewed by Dennis Prager

Info on the above audio:

In a wonderful interview with Kiberley Strassel, Dennis Prager asks away on some VERY important issues that we conservatives should be knowledgeable on. Namely how the Professional Left is using government to suppress political opposition to their view of life. The subject was so interesting I bought her book, “The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech

There is a lot to listen to here, all of it is worthwhile… so settle in.

  • Her columns at The Wall Street Journal can be found here
  • You can also see her on Fox talking about her book, here
  • Follow her on Twitter.

Rand Paul’s Tax Code Plan (2016 Election Season)

My plan is the biggest and boldest tax cut in American history. This will shake up Washington and Wall Street, no doubt. But I’m not running for their approval, I’m running to take our country back.

I am not a huge fan of the Pauls… but I would overlook a lot of what I see as flaws in Rand if he would push for this. This would be a huge boost to the economy, business, and reform our country needs. Here is his SITE for Pres if you are interested.

The following is from Glenn Beck:

“He has just announced a radical tax plan. I’m telling you, this is erotic, it is so good,” Glenn said.

PAT: I’m in love with it. Even though I’m not a huge —

GLENN: Pat is not a huge Rand Paul fan. I looked at him — he rolled his eyes when I said he has a tax plan you will like. He rolled his eyes. Then I said, you’re thinking about it, aren’t you? And he’s like, oh, I am. Listen to this.

  • RAND: I’m running for president to defeat the Washington machine. And to do that, we have to drive a stake through the heart of the IRS and our terrible tax code. We need to tear it up and start over, with a plan that’s simple, fair, and cuts taxes for every single American. Let’s start with the workers tax cut. For most Americans, the biggest tax they pay is the FICA tax on their paycheck. And all anyone ever tries to do is raise that tax or pretend you’re not paying it. In my tax plan, the first thing we’ll do is eliminate the workers tax. That’s right. It’s gone. Zero. Nothing. That means that every single working American would keep thousands of dollars more in their paycheck —

GLENN: FICA gone.

PAT: Yes! Seriously.

  • RAND: We’re not stopping there. We will end corporate welfare and eliminate the army of lobbyists and tax lawyers gaming the system.

GLENN: I like that.

  • RAND: All special tax breaks will be gone, in exchange for one low flat rate of 14.5 percent that every single business will pay. No more billion-dollar corporations paying zero —

GLENN: But wait. There’s more.

  • RAND: But also, no more mom-and-pop businesses paying 40 percent. Everyone pays the same, and it will grow our economy. In fact, the Tax Foundation studies show my plan will create nearly 2 million jobs. Finally, every American taxpayer, everyone will be able to file a very simple return on one page at a low and fair rate of 14.5 percent — for every single American. And the guy with the most lawyers and accountants doesn’t win; you do. My plan will cut taxes for everyone. It will end corporate welfare and special tax breaks. It will create jobs, and it will get the IRS out of your life.

GLENN: Amen. That is unbelievable. That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard from any candidate on the IRS yet. Phenomenal. Rand Paul.

(h/t Gay Patriot… who points out in a roundabout way that it is a pipe dream)

It Turns Out FoxNews Doesn’t Control Republicans ~ Cue Gnashing of Teeth

To be fair, the gnashing will be coming from both sides. Here is how one left leaning person put it on my FB:boombenghazi

  • Funny how Faux News has nothing on this report. Curious to see what crackhead Megyn Kelly has to say about this.

This was my response:

I am at Wolf Creek right now [the Brewery], but I was at work. You can always post stuff like that on my timeline with something like: “hey, I don’t know if you saw this, but the Repubs are shooting down some theories that the media ~ read here Fox ~ have been putting forward. What are your thoughts when you get the time?”

That way you are being approachable as well as putting the onus on me to back up some of what I previously thought. Just some tips on being strategic in your challenges.

 Another right-leaning person on a friends FB said this:

  • I don’t care what the Times says happened or not. All they care about is clearing Hillary.

My response to a compatriot:

Trust me, Trey Gowdy is not about “clearing” Hillary.

If we cannot admit evidence into a debate that counter’s our position — at all — we are merely a clanging bell. It is one reason I reject neo-Darwinism as well as conspiracy theories… they can never be wrong.

Much to the dismay and with gnashing of teeth, liberals have to acknowledge that Fox News does not control (insert evil laughter *here*) Republicans.

Trey Gowdy, the “bulldog of justice” in the House and a V E R Y conservative member of the House led the two year investigation. While I was thinking there was more to the story, Rep. Gowdy had WAY more information and evidence and eyewitness testimony than Fox News or others in the blogosphere had (obviously). So Rep. Gowdy being a “bulldog” came to a fair decision for sure, putting to rest my own pet-theories. Here is National Review:

A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees. . . .

The investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

In response to accusations that the administration misled the American public in the days following the Benghazi attack by blaming events on a spontaneous protest against a YouTube video:

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, intelligence about who carried it out and why was contradictory, the report found. That led Susan Rice, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to inaccurately assert that the attack had evolved from a protest, when in fact there had been no protest. But it was intelligence analysts, not political appointees, who made the wrong call, the committee found. The report did not conclude that Rice or any other government official acted in bad faith or intentionally misled the American people….

What Trey Gowdy knows is the “bad faith” is something meant more for contract law/legal matters. Not the Benghazi issue in the House. Here is the conclusion of the report:

Concluding Paragraph

This report is the result of nearly two years of intensive investigation. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence reviewed thousands of pages of intelligence assessments, cables, notes, and emails; held 20 Committee events and hearings; and conducted detailed interviews with senior intelligence officials and eyewitnesses to the attacks, including eight security personnel on the ground in Benghazi that night. Members and Staff spent thousands of hours intensively looking at every aspect of the tragedy. The report is therefore meant to serve as the definitive House statement on the Intelligence Community’s activities before, during and after the tragic events that caused the deaths of four brave Americans. Despite the highly sensitive nature of these activities, the report has endeavored to make the facts and conclusions within this report widely and publicly available so that the American public can separate actual fact from rumor and unsupported innuendo. Only with a full accounting of the facts can we ensure that tragedies like this one never happen again.

Again, I trust Rep. Gowdy’s attentiveness and eat crow gracefully.

I think the only activity the House should be concerned with is getting some of the 300[+] bills they wrote and passed [many with Democrats on-board and bi-partisen activity] that Harry Reid has scuttled since 2006 passed.

The IRS crime should squared away with immunity going to Lerner for info or her going to jail. Getting Obama-Care replaced and creating a better business environment in America. Black conservative voices should capitalize on the fact that unemployment in the black community is high and the fact that Obama essentially is giving the opportunity to 5-million people (the ones that will come forward will probably be about 1.5 million or so) to get legal job hiring status. THUS, bringing unemployment ~ esp. in the black community ~ higher (see here).

From this mid-term on we have to be strategic, and Benghazi is not one of those hills to die on. And TRUE liberals should be upset that all these hard-drives conveniently crashed… and as a new person was added to the list to be investigated… walla, their hard-drive crashed. The power of the government to audit political enemies was a BIG deal in the Nixon investigation. But not now? The chances of these hard-drives crashing like this would be 3,139,250-to-1:

Strategic battles, conservatives (myself included) will have to give-up pet peeves.