The identity of the anonymous IRS whistleblower alleging political misconduct throughout the Hunter Biden investigation was revealed on Wednesday as special agent Joseph Ziegler — a gay Democrat with more than a dozen years serving within the agency’s criminal investigative division.
Ziegler appeared for the first time publicly before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, alongside his IRS supervisor Gary Shapley, who also has blown the whistle on political influence surrounding prosecutorial decisions throughout the years-long federal probe into the president’s son.
Ziegler said he is a 13-year special agent within the IRS’ Criminal Investigation Division and described himself as a “gay Democrat married to a man.”
He testified that Hunter Biden “should have been charged with a tax felony, and not only the tax misdemeanor charge,” and that communications and text messages reviewed by investigators “may be a contradiction to what President Biden was saying about not being involved in Hunter’s overseas business dealings.”
Ziegler asked Congress and the Biden administration to “consider a special counsel” for the Hunter Biden investigation and “all the related cases and spin-off investigations that have come forward from this investigation.”
Ziegler said specifically that Congress should consider “establishing an official channel for Federal investigators to pull the emergency cord and raise the issue of the appointment of a special counsel for consideration by your senior officials.”
FORMER FBI AGENT CONFIRMS KEY DETAILS OF HUNTER BIDEN WHISTLEBLOWER’S TESTIMONY, GOP SAYS
“After an electronic search warrant on Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud account led us to WhatsApp messages with several CEFC China Energy executives where he claimed to be sitting and discussing business with his father Joe Biden, we sought permission to follow up on the information in the messages,” Shapley said. “Prosecutors would not allow it.”
When pressed on this, Shapley said there “were multiple instances in this investigation where there are references to the father of the subject, President Biden.”
“And in the course of any normal investigation, when the subject’s father is somehow related to the finances of the subject,” Shapley said. “Now, in the normal course of any investigation, we would have to go and get that information to properly vet the financial flows of money in that investigation to determine what we end up charging.”
During the hearing, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said the whistleblowers’ testimony confirms much of his committee’s findings throughout its six-month-long investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings.
Ziegler confirmed that between 2014 and 2019, the Biden family received approximately $17 million from Romania, China, and other foreign countries.
“What were the Bidens’ selling?” Comer said. “Nothing but influence and access to the Biden network.”
Sams responded with a joke. “Your caps lock is stuck on,” he said.
The highly-anticipated hearing comes amid a joint-congressional investigation by the Oversight Committee, Judiciary Committee and House Ways and Means Committee into the federal probe into Hunter Biden and whether prosecutorial decisions were influenced by politics.
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