Two IRS agents who worked on the investigation of Hunter Biden claimed in explosive congressional testimony Wednesday that Justice Department officials stymied an investigation into the first son and members of the Biden family.
IRS supervisory special agent Gary Shapley and IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler provided extensive evidence of Biden’s efforts to avoid paying nearly $1.6 million in taxes from 2014 and 2019.
Here are the main revelations from their testimony before the House Oversight Committee.
Hunter Biden ‘should have been charged’ with tax felonies.
Ziegler, who opened the Biden probe in 2018, testified that Hunter Biden "should have been charged with a tax felony," but that federal prosecutors and the Justice Department settled only for misdemeanor charges.
Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failure to pay his taxes for 2017 and 2018. Ziegler and Shapley testified that prosecutors initially approved of felony charges for the tax years 2014 to 2019.
Shapley said that as recently as August 2022, prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware supported felony counts against Hunter Biden for the years 2017, 2018, and 2019.
The Hunter Biden tax probe began with payments to prostitutes.
Ziegler, a registered Democrat, testified that he opened a tax investigation of Hunter Biden in November 2018 after reviewing bank records that "identified Hunter Biden as paying prostitutes related to a potential prostitution ring." The records also showed Hunter Biden spent "lavishly" from his corporate bank account, a pattern that Ziegler said is a red flag for potential tax fraud.
According to Ziegler, Hunter Biden filed false tax returns that included improper deductions for "prostitutes, sex clubs, and his adult children’s tuition."
Hunter Biden deducted payments to his "West Coast assistant," who was actually a prostitute. Ziegler also said that Hunter Biden deducted a $10,000 payment he falsely described as a golf club membership.
"That was not a golf club membership—that was for a sex club payment," Ziegler said.
IRS agents were warned against interviewing Hunter Biden’s adult children.
Ziegler testified that the IRS investigators were prohibited from interviewing Hunter Biden’s adult children about suspicious payments they received from their father. Ziegler said prosecutors told him the interviews would "get us in hot water."
Ziegler said the stand-down order was "abnormal" and a "deviation from normal procedure." He testified the interviews would have helped investigators determine whether Hunter Biden’s deductions for payments to his children were for legitimate business purposes, or evidence of tax fraud.
Prosecutors blocked agents from investigating Hunter Biden’s infamous WhatsApp messages.
Ziegler said prosecutors handling the Biden probe blocked him from investigating an infamous Hunter Biden text message in which he invoked his father in a threatening text message to his partners at CEFC China Energy.
"I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father," Hunter Biden wrote in a July 30, 2017, message to a CEFC China Energy executive.
"I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction."
Ziegler said prosecutors declined to approve his request to obtain location data to see if Hunter was with his father when he sent the message. The IRS agent said the line of inquiry "simply wasn’t supported by the prosecutors."
The Washington Free Beacon reported that Hunter Biden was photographed at his father’s home in Delaware on the day of the message.
Foreign entities made seven-figure payments to Biden family.
Shapley and Ziegler revealed that foreign entities in China, Romania, and Ukraine paid the Biden family $17 million from 2014 to 2019.
CEFC China Energy, an energy conglomerate linked to the Chinese Communist Party, made a total of $6.7 million in payments to Hunter Biden and his consulting company. Ukraine’s Burisma Holdings paid $6.5 million to Hunter Biden and his associates. A Romanian businessman under investigation for bribery paid another $3.1 million to Hunter Biden and his associates.
According to Ziegler, Hunter Biden did not report any income from Ukraine’s Burisma in 2014, though he received more than $80,000 a month from the company.