The Megyn Kelly Show - 20230720_irs-whistleblowers-on-hunter-biden-investigation-r
Aired: 2023-07-20
Duration: 01:41:55


=== Whistleblowers Witness Misconduct (09:43) ===

[00:00:35]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:01:05]  Within the Department of Justice, they are whistleblowers, and this is their first interview together and first interview since yesterday's bizarre hearing.
[00:01:14]  I mean, what the Democrats tried to do to these two guys was absolutely bizarre.
[00:01:18]  We'll get into all of it.
[00:01:20]  Gary Shapley worked for the IRS for 14 years.
[00:01:22]  He's still there.
[00:01:23]  Joseph Ziegler, who until yesterday was known only as Whistleblower X, has worked at the agency for 13 years.
[00:01:30]  Both men, in their opening remarks, describing in detail why they have serious problems with how the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden's taxes was handled by prosecutors and the Department of Justice.
[00:01:41]  These are the two guys who are on the case, running the case, investigating the case, but they're not prosecutors.
[00:01:47]  They needed the prosecutors to actually bring the case, to actually file the charges.
[00:01:52]  And at every turn, they allege they were stymied.
[00:01:54]  It was slow-rolled, and they witnessed misconduct.
[00:01:58]  For the most part, yesterday the Democrats just stuck their fingers in their ears and yelled, But Trump!
[00:02:03]  Trump, Trump, Trump!
[00:02:04]  And indeed, Trump was president for the beginning few months of part of these allegations.
[00:02:11]  But the meat of the case, the slow rolling and the behavior by most of these authorities, happened after Trump.
[00:02:18]  And for that matter, you know, the people who are in charge seem to have been very pro-Biden and anti-Trump right from the get-go.
[00:02:27]  That's my editorial.
[00:02:28]  Several of these Democrats bizarrely brought race into the discussion.
[00:02:33]  What?
[00:02:33]  What does that have to do with anything?
[00:02:35]  But Shapley and Ziegler did not waver in their allegations, which include that they were told they could not pursue key warrants, search warrants, involving Hunter Biden due to quote the optics of it.
[00:02:46]  That prosecutors tipped off Hunter Biden's defense counsel about potential searches and about their intent to interview Hunter, that they were blocked from looking into leads involving Hunter Biden's grown children, who he was using for some tax deductions.
[00:03:03]  And the men claimed that they were told by prosecutors not to ask questions at all about dad or the big guy.
[00:03:11]  There's a lot to get into.
[00:03:13]  We're going to walk you through what is a complicated story, but we'll present it to you in a way that you can understand.
[00:03:18]  Joining me now, Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler.
[00:03:21]  Guys, welcome.
[00:03:22]  Thank you so much for being here.
[00:03:24]  Thank you, Megan, for having us.
[00:03:25]  Yeah, thank you so much for having us.
[00:03:28]  I'm sorry you're going through this.
[00:03:29]  My main reaction watching what happened yesterday was: you were treated very disrespectfully, and it's wrong.
[00:03:36]  You're not partisan hacks.
[00:03:38]  You're a career service men who have not made a ton of money over at the IRS investigating tax cheats.
[00:03:47]  And when you saw something unethical, you found the courage to speak up about it, which isn't easy to do.
[00:03:54]  So I'll just kick it off there.
[00:03:56]  Did you feel about the way you were treated yesterday and the way you've been treated since you first came forward uh, six weeks or so ago?
[00:04:04]  First anonymously in your case Joe, and uh now, on the record for both of you Gary, i'll start with you.
[00:04:11]  Yeah, so you know, as you know, you know, when we conduct these, these investigations, it's not about politics and and uh, you know, there's just nothing uh, you know political, there's no political activity in my uh, my background um, and uh, you know so, being in this uh hearing yesterday, you know I thought that there were there were good questions uh, from both sides and uh, you know, there there were unfair questions from from uh, from both sides, and um also,
[00:04:39]  you know that there were opportunities where I was asked a question and I just wasn't allowed to finish and but um, what when it's all said and done right, like I, i'm not a part of committee, stuff like that, and i've i've really witnessed, never witnessed that before.
[00:04:55]  So, you know, I guess it's just business as usual there.
[00:04:59]  So uh, you know, I just took it uh, with a grain of salt and focused on the facts and you know, they just, you know, at the end of the day.
[00:05:05]  They just couldn't affect uh, attack the facts uh because uh, they they can't, they can't taint the facts so well.
[00:05:12]  I know you've both gone to the inspector generals of the relevant agencies involved, but whistleblowing to Congress provides another layer of security that those inspector generals are going to have to actually investigate and that the American public now knows and we're going to be watching.
[00:05:28]  So it's a smart move.
[00:05:28]  But watching this yesterday, all I could think Joe, was these guys got to be second guessing.
[00:05:32]  Their decision to look at these nimrods on Capitol Hill is any sort of oversight on all of this.
[00:05:37]  I mean, what does race have to?
[00:05:39]  Could you believe some of these questions?
[00:05:41]  Um, i'll just like this isn't the most relevant, but i'll just give the audience a flavor uh, for what you were subjected to.
[00:05:47]  Here's sot eight.
[00:05:48]  It's uh, Democrat representative Chantel Brown of Ohio.
[00:05:52]  This is where she wanted to go with your allegations about Hunter Biden's tax crimes and why the DOJ didn't charge them more seriously.
[00:06:00]  I know the American people are confused, because we're all confused what we're doing here.
[00:06:05]  Do you know the rate at which black taxpayers are audited as compared to taxpayers who are not black?
[00:06:13]  No, I don't know.
[00:06:14]  Well, the answer is, black taxpayers are audited at 2.9 to 4.7 times the rate of non-black taxpayers.
[00:06:22]  Another question for you sir, yes or no?
[00:06:24]  Will this hearing help alleviate the racial disparity in the rates of the IRS audits?
[00:06:31]  That's not the topic.
[00:06:33]  That was Gary saying that.
[00:06:35]  That's not the topic.
[00:06:36]  What was your experience like yesterday, Joe?
[00:06:38]  What did you make of it?
[00:06:40]  So yeah, from my perspective, being someone who has um, liberal beliefs and I I am a Democrat um, but I was kind of disappointed.
[00:06:53]  I was kind of disappointed that the other side of the aisle didn't care about what we came there to say and and I mean, I really want, like people to understand that Gary and I essentially, were just trying to do the right thing for right reason and, at the end of the day, there were some things that happened.
[00:07:13]  As a part of this investigation, we're bringing those facts forward and I think it's important for the American people to make that decision, for Congress to weigh the facts.
[00:07:26]  They're going to investigate this and we'll see where those facts lay out, and I think it's that that's the thing that struck me the most from yesterday is that It seemed like that there were certain people that really didn't care what we had to present to Congress.
[00:07:43]  And that disappointed.
[00:07:46]  You have this lady talking about racial disparities.
[00:07:49]  You have Marjorie Taylor Greene showing X-rated photos of Hunter Biden from the laptop.
[00:07:56]  And you're up there.
[00:07:57]  I mean, Joe, yesterday was the first time we heard from you.
[00:07:59]  You're up there saying this case involves unethical, quoting here, and inappropriate behavior, an abuse of power, the corrosion of ethical standards, misconduct, gross mismanagement, gross waste of funds, and on and on.
[00:08:15]  I mean, this is what you're alleging is rather stunning.
[00:08:19]  And it's on the part of our most trusted federal law enforcement officers inside of the Department of Justice.
[00:08:25]  That's the story.
[00:08:26]  That's the story, what you witnessed there.
[00:08:28]  And then we'll get to the retaliation that you allegedly suffered once you found the courage to come forward.
[00:08:36]  Can you look, Gary, take us to the, like the Zoom out.
[00:08:40]  The viewers who are at home who haven't been paying attention to this, who are looking at you two guys saying, who are these?
[00:08:45]  I don't like IRS agents.
[00:08:46]  I'm already against them.
[00:08:47]  I don't, I don't, why should I be listening to Gary and Joe?
[00:08:52]  Why do I care about this story?
[00:08:54]  You know, so Hunter Biden didn't perfectly dot the I's and cross the T's on a couple of tax returns.
[00:08:58]  Why is this a national story?
[00:09:01]  Well, I think that what we're doing is we're doing the right thing.
[00:09:05]  And the mission of IRSCI is to instill confidence in the tax code.
[00:09:10]  So the Americans out there that are looking at us, I mean, we should be, you know, they should be looking at us as like, we're doing the right thing and that we're making sure that at least the investigations that come across our desk, that we make sure that people are being treated equally and fairly.
[00:09:28]  And that it shouldn't, the 300 million Americans out there that are paying their taxes today, you know, when they tune in, you know, Democrats said, you know, I don't know why I'm here.
[00:09:37]  You know, we're confused why we're here.
[00:09:38]  Well, those Americans are confused why we're here because there's two IRS agents standing up and saying, this person got preferential treatment.
[00:09:47]  And if it was a business owner on the corner, he wouldn't have gotten, he or she wouldn't have gotten that special treatment.
[00:09:55]  And we then probably would have been in jail already.
[00:09:57]  So that's what I say to America.
[00:10:00]  I mean, we're here.
[00:10:02]  We're the big bad IRS and we're here fighting for you because it needs to be a fair application of justice.
[00:10:10]  Yeah, those of us who actually pay our taxes begrudgingly, but we do it because we know we have to, we get screwed by people who don't do it, who don't follow the laws.

=== Punitive Retaliation Alleged (08:48) ===

[00:10:19]  And in the case of Hunter Biden, as I read your allegations, he flouted the law in 2014 and 2015 and 2016 and 2017 and 2018 and 2019.
[00:10:28]  I mean, we could go on.
[00:10:29]  This wasn't a one-time mistake.
[00:10:31]  This was a systemic just flouting of the criminal law to the point where it was multiple felonies that you were all agreeing on.
[00:10:41]  That's an important point here, Joe.
[00:10:43]  I mean, we'll get to why later.
[00:10:44]  But is that not true that it was not just you guys inside the IRS?
[00:10:49]  It was the FBI and it was the prosecutors at the very highest levels of this case who, at least earlier, before the final moments came, had agreed he committed felonies and needed to be charged with felonies, unlike the two tax misdemeanors, which he's now agreed to plead guilty to.
[00:11:06]  There is no tax felony that Hunter Biden is about to plead guilty to for the record.
[00:11:12]  Yeah, and I want to be clear about that.
[00:11:14]  So the meeting you're referencing is August of 2022.
[00:11:19]  We have a phone call with the prosecution team.
[00:11:22]  It's all the assigned prosecutors.
[00:11:24]  And they tell us that we are recommending for approval the felony and misdemeanor tax charges related to 2017, 18, and 19.
[00:11:33]  So that essentially means that they are done with their memo.
[00:11:36]  It is now going to the next layer of review.
[00:11:39]  And they were actually at that same time getting ready to bring that case, bring those charges in the Central District of California.
[00:11:48]  And to go from that point to where we are now, two misdemeanors compared to that felony that was recommended for approval, it's just an inequitable treatment of taxpayers.
[00:12:00]  That's the whole reason why that that's written into the into the DOJ manual.
[00:12:07]  It's we have to treat everyone the same.
[00:12:10]  The DOJ manual says if there are felonies, you must charge the felonies and the misdemeanors.
[00:12:15]  Is that correct?
[00:12:17]  So if there are from from what I understand in the tax or in the in the actual DOJ manual, that if there is a felony present with a misdemeanor, that you have to charge the felony.
[00:12:28]  And I can tell you that we just had training this last April with Department of Justice Tax Division in their slideshow.
[00:12:36]  They actually have this highlighted.
[00:12:38]  If there is a felony with the misdemeanor, you have to charge the mis or you have to charge the felon.
[00:12:44]  And that was not done here.
[00:12:46]  And so by this point, I mean, we'll get to all of this, but by the point you guys saw that they had struck the deal with Hunter, YouTube had been taken off the case, right?
[00:12:54]  Like a few months earlier, they were like, we're done with Gary and Joe.
[00:12:58]  We're done with these guys who are jumping up and down about felonies and reminding us of what we said in prior meetings.
[00:13:04]  So I guess you were taken by surprise when you saw that.
[00:13:07]  Is that true, Gary?
[00:13:09]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:10]  I mean, that's correct.
[00:13:11]  And it can only go back to the fact that, you know, we were, they understood that I came forward and was making protected disclosures.
[00:13:21]  And, you know, it was just really a form of retaliation.
[00:13:24]  If you look at the dates of which it occurred, May 15th of 2023 is when we were notified that the team was being removed.
[00:13:34]  You know, it's just odd that then this agreement comes out with misdemeanors with agents that are going to attend the plea hearing in Delaware next week.
[00:13:49]  And they had no documents.
[00:13:50]  They had really none of the case file at that point.
[00:13:54]  And so it's just really befuddling.
[00:13:57]  And there's nothing it can be other than punitive retaliation against Special Agency and I. Because just to be clear, what you're saying is, because I read in Joe's testimony yesterday, he was saying, we started to get edged out of this thing months before the actual charges were announced.
[00:14:15]  You know, you were told repeatedly, Joe, like, you know what?
[00:14:19]  We're going to handle that now.
[00:14:20]  Other people who didn't have the frontline involvement, you were the case investigator, Joe, you were frontline.
[00:14:26]  And so they started to squeeze you out.
[00:14:28]  And then by May, when you realized what was going on, according to you, you came forward.
[00:14:36]  You reported up the line within the IRS.
[00:14:38]  You didn't just first run to Congress.
[00:14:40]  You went inside the IRS and went to inspectors general.
[00:14:44]  And then you're saying the retaliation started.
[00:14:47]  That's when you officially got pulled from the case.
[00:14:49]  And now the agents at the Hunter Biden hearing next week will not include you, Joe, who are the lead investigator on this whole thing, or you, Gary, who was his supervisor and helped run Roughshot all over it from the beginning.
[00:15:01]  Is that correct?
[00:15:03]  Yeah.
[00:15:04]  Yeah, that would be correct.
[00:15:06]  It's amazing.
[00:15:07]  So it's like, okay, so what would be the reason for taking the two guys who know the most about the case off the case?
[00:15:12]  Just so happens to be right after you came forward blowing the whistle on the DOJ.
[00:15:18]  You know, well, there's been, you know, Hunter Biden's legal team has kind of insinuated that it had something to do with a leak on October 6th.
[00:15:26]  And there's, you know, yes, and I had my attorneys send letters to Washington Post, which release them from any confidentiality or requirements that they would have had if I was indeed their source.
[00:15:42]  And, you know, they know I wasn't their source.
[00:15:45]  I've never leaked illegal information.
[00:15:46]  I've told each inspector general the same thing.
[00:15:49]  I told House, Ways, and Means Committee same thing.
[00:15:52]  I swore under oath yesterday the same thing.
[00:15:55]  And so they're really just trying to find an excuse to why they removed us.
[00:16:01]  And that's going to be their excuse.
[00:16:02]  And there were other leaks in this investigation that supposedly came from the Department of Justice.
[00:16:07]  And they didn't remove people.
[00:16:08]  They didn't move any U.S. attorneys, assisting United States attorneys around, prosecutors around.
[00:16:14]  So it's really just retaliation because they didn't want us involved as they move forward because we simply wouldn't have been okay with them settling on the charges to which they agreed to plead guilty to.
[00:16:28]  All right.
[00:16:28]  So let's go through it because, yeah, go ahead, Joe.
[00:16:31]  Can I add something on that?
[00:16:32]  So there was something that even in the midst of the hearing yesterday, we got word that information related to me being related to this person by the name of Garrett Ziegler, the same last name that I have.
[00:16:47]  I just want to tell your like your audience and the American people that six months, or I think it was six months December of 2022, me and my husband's personal information, our social media were leaked on Twitter.
[00:17:03]  And it was, I mean, that I'm leaked as being the case agent for this investigation.
[00:17:11]  And this related to a previous bank report that was released or that Chase had that this individual got his hands on.
[00:17:21]  So even as much as yesterday, I was being accused of somehow being related and handing over information to him, which I have not, that is not something I would do.
[00:17:32]  It's completely preposterous.
[00:17:34]  They slam like on Twitter, I'm being called a clown.
[00:17:37]  My husband is being harassed.
[00:17:39]  I mean, it was just absolutely awful.
[00:17:42]  And yeah, I mean, for what we went through through that and then getting removed from the case, it just, I said this in my email to the commissioner.
[00:17:53]  It's the human impact of what is going on here that it felt it felt for me that our agency, the IRS, did not have our back.
[00:18:04]  They had the back of Department of Justice.
[00:18:06]  And that really, really bothered me.
[00:18:09]  So just to be clear, Garrett Ziegler is connected to Trump in some way.
[00:18:12]  And they were trying to say you're related to this guy and therefore you're in bed with Trump.
[00:18:18]  And what you're saying is that's all nonsense.
[00:18:20]  None of that is true.
[00:18:22]  And you're both saying that them trying to tar you as like dirty or agenda-driven IRS agents because somebody leaked to the Washington Post in the fall of 22 is false.
[00:18:34]  You were not the leakers.
[00:18:35]  You did not leak about this investigation.
[00:18:36]  You did your jobs.
[00:18:38]  Your allegations about what the DOJ did wrong are heartfelt and sincere and aren't driven by politics or any of that, whether it's loyalty to the Dems or the Republicans.
[00:18:49]  Yeah, I can tell you it seems from hearing from people within our agency that this was something that was a long time coming, that there is in some instances, an inequitable treatment of taxpayers.

=== Politics vs Partisan Claims (05:02) ===

[00:19:08]  And I think it's important with this case and this issue that we're that we came forward.
[00:19:15]  All the things that we've done, I mean, is to two things I said, so that we're holding people accountable that actually took part in this and that we learned from this.
[00:19:27]  That's the two most important things that we can come from this.
[00:19:31]  Well, Joe, you said that you're a Democrat.
[00:19:33]  Do you, was there ever any hesitation?
[00:19:36]  You know, I mean, I assume you preferred Joe Biden over Donald Trump, but did you, did you ever think, oh, God, it's the president's son or it's Joe Biden's son?
[00:19:45]  What am I doing?
[00:19:46]  This is scary.
[00:19:47]  I don't really want to see this go down.
[00:19:49]  It's going to be bad for Joe Biden.
[00:19:52]  So I grew up in a very conservative family.
[00:19:56]  I actually grew up with conservative beliefs.
[00:19:59]  So I came out when I was 30.
[00:20:02]  So that would have been about eight years ago.
[00:20:05]  And kind of my perspective on life and what my decisions in life, I viewed myself fiscally conservative, socially liberal.
[00:20:15]  So, I mean, those are my, what are my personal beliefs?
[00:20:19]  But when it came to this case, like I thought it was super important to not say anything inappropriate.
[00:20:25]  We can't be joking around about this.
[00:20:29]  And even in the last presidential election, I voted, but I chose not to vote for who the presidential candidate was.
[00:20:37]  And the reason why I did that was I didn't want to be, if this case were to move to a trial and I'm the summary witness on the stand and they asked me that question, I don't want to have to show potential bias.
[00:20:49]  And I knew that that's how serious the kind of investigation we were involved in.
[00:20:54]  It's serious and sensitive.
[00:20:56]  And I think that that's important for people to understand about me and my beliefs.
[00:21:04]  Gary, I know you're from my neck of the woods, sort of upstate central New York.
[00:21:09]  I grew up in Syracuse and Albany, so you're not far from where I grew up.
[00:21:12]  And my experience of this area of New York State is it breeds reasonable people, not hard partisans.
[00:21:20]  I've heard you say none of this is partisan for you, but do you want to state for the record what your politics are or how the fact that you were investigating President Biden's or, you know, then candidate Biden's and that turned into President Biden's son affected you?
[00:21:35]  Look, you know, I'm not going to get into personal politics.
[00:21:38]  I mean, my statement of the House Ways and Means Committee, you know, clearly I tried to dispel any of this nonsense that I was some Republican hack as, you know, they tried to attack me early on, but, you know, there's no, there's a, you know, I've never donated to campaigns.
[00:21:58]  I've never had a political t-shirt.
[00:22:00]  I've never had a sign in my front yard.
[00:22:01]  I've never had a sticker on my car.
[00:22:03]  I mean, look, like, you know, if somehow I'm supposed to be labeled a partisan because when I registered to vote, I registered as a Republican.
[00:22:15]  I guess they can have that.
[00:22:16]  But, you know, one of the most interesting interactions I had was after a CBS interview where they said that I was a registered Republican.
[00:22:28]  And my mother's first text to me was, I didn't know you were a registered Republican.
[00:22:34]  Why would you be a registered Republican?
[00:22:36]  So, you know, I was raised in a very liberal household.
[00:22:40]  And, you know, so there's cases I've helped on in the past that are political in nature that were targeted toward Republicans.
[00:22:53]  And there's, you know, an agent in my group that Was the government witness in the Congressman Fortenberry trial and testified during that trial.
[00:23:06]  So, you know, to say that there's some type of politics involved in our investigative decision making is just clearly not supported by the facts.
[00:23:17]  That's interesting.
[00:23:18]  You're a registered Republican who was raised in a liberal household.
[00:23:20]  And Joe, you're a registered Democrat who was raised in a more conservative household.
[00:23:24]  But this is how you get whistleblowers.
[00:23:25]  You get honest people who are not ideologues and completely captured by their own politics.
[00:23:32]  So good for you.
[00:23:32]  I mean, it explains some of your courage, and I admire it.
[00:23:37]  Okay, let's get into the allegations because I do think people can believe you or not believe you, but when you listen to the examples that you guys have provided, it's tough to walk away with anything other than this is alarming.
[00:23:52]  They can't all be false, even if people don't want to believe you.
[00:23:55]  Not all of this can be made up.
[00:23:57]  And it does clearly, in my view, show a pattern of obfuscation by the Department of Justice into what was supposed to be a free-flowing, independent investigation that would take you wherever the facts led you.

=== Failure to File Returns (03:39) ===

[00:24:10]  So let's go back because I think the timeline could be helpful.
[00:24:14]  It was you, Joe, as the case agent were investigating something having to do with bank records.
[00:24:21]  And we don't need to get into all the specifics because it's confusing enough, but it led you to the name Hunter Biden and whether he'd been somehow involved in some prostitution ring and had committed some tax malfeasance on it.
[00:24:34]  That's how this first came to you, right?
[00:24:37]  So yeah, so I was actually in the normal course of my doing my work.
[00:24:42]  Part of our process is you read through bank reports.
[00:24:46]  And in this bank report, it mentioned information related to Hunter Biden paying some of these alleged prostitutes.
[00:24:55]  And what I also found, and I don't know if it was in that bank report or if it was in public sources, but that is his ex-wife in her divorce proceeding was making some pretty harsh allegations regarding his tax issues.
[00:25:10]  So I had those two things that kind of was like, okay, let me see if there's anything to this.
[00:25:16]  And then that's when I started really looking into the case.
[00:25:20]  What's a bank report?
[00:25:24]  So I can't get into the, I mean, we're restricted to certain information that we can talk about, but yeah, it's a bank report that provides information to us.
[00:25:35]  It's available in the normal course of case development and a data and data review.
[00:25:43]  Okay, so it might be something that would have a red flag on it for you guys as tax experts on how somebody's manipulating the tax code or bank payments or something like that.
[00:25:56]  Sure, that's fair.
[00:25:57]  Yeah.
[00:25:57]  Okay.
[00:25:58]  Okay.
[00:25:59]  All right.
[00:25:59]  So that you sort of get he comes to your attention.
[00:26:03]  Now, you said that as of October.
[00:26:06]  Well, let me go back further because it was what?
[00:26:09]  I want to get the actual date right that this started for you.
[00:26:12]  What was the date?
[00:26:13]  What was the year that that happened, Joe?
[00:26:16]  November of 2018.
[00:26:18]  So that's when I first started preparing reports to send up to my supervisor.
[00:26:24]  And I can recall my supervisor at that time because we essentially had failure to file returns.
[00:26:30]  We knew that he should have filed returns.
[00:26:32]  So I'm like, let's, this is a reason to initiate the case.
[00:26:36]  So with a failure to file charge, if the person failed to file returns and they had the requirement to file those returns, the crime is committed essentially when on April 15th, when the tax deadline comes.
[00:26:55]  So that's important to like understand when it comes to failure to file or failure to pay.
[00:26:59]  So we get we get all that information.
[00:27:05]  I send that information up and not Gary, but my prior supervisor at the time told me this isn't a normal taxpayer.
[00:27:12]  He's politically, this is a political, basically a political person.
[00:27:16]  We need way more than this to just even get this to the Department of Justice.
[00:27:21]  So, I mean, I couldn't believe he said that at that time.
[00:27:25]  It's my brand new manager.
[00:27:26]  And I'm like, I couldn't believe it, but I had, it was kind of a first roadblock.
[00:27:31]  So it was like, kept working through those roadblocks.
[00:27:34]  I kept digging and digging and digging.
[00:27:37]  And after my third essentially report up to him, which included information regarding the bereavement income not being reported, that was enough where it's like, okay, you've got enough.

=== Prosecutors as Roadblocks (09:38) ===

[00:27:49]  And then we sent that up to Department of Justice Tax Division because they're the first line that gets our referral to refer it over to a U.S. attorney's office.
[00:28:00]  Okay.
[00:28:00]  So now it's going up to the lawyers, basically.
[00:28:02]  It's going from the investigatory agents to the lawyers saying, we think you have a case.
[00:28:06]  Do you think you have a case?
[00:28:07]  And one of the first things you heard was, because you were saying, well, we think we have a case and we think it should be brought in Washington, D.C.
[00:28:14]  And their response was, okay, but it's going to be brought in Delaware, if anywhere.
[00:28:21]  And you immediately had concerns.
[00:28:23]  Why?
[00:28:25]  Yeah.
[00:28:25]  So, I mean, everything we pointed to in the beginning, our venue analysis was essentially that he was living in Washington, D.C. during the times, during certain points of the tax years.
[00:28:40]  So everything pointed to the fact that DC is venue for the case.
[00:28:45]  But I was informed by my supervisor and he was informed by people higher than people high up in DOJ.
[00:28:56]  And the decision was made to combine the two cases in Delaware.
[00:29:00]  And I can tell you, like, when we started working those cases, or I saw a ton of issues with that.
[00:29:06]  First off, it's the home state of President Biden.
[00:29:12]  There were issues that I saw in the office where, oh, it was former vice president at that time, but he might be coming into the office for this issue.
[00:29:25]  So there was that that we were constantly dealing with.
[00:29:29]  There was a magistrate judge who made a comment during the signing of one of the warrants that she had to recuse herself.
[00:29:38]  So those are just a few of the issues that we were facing working that case there in Delaware.
[00:29:45]  That I just, it was roadblock, roadblock, roadblock.
[00:29:50]  It was fraught.
[00:29:50]  And you didn't think it belonged in Delaware to begin with.
[00:29:53]  So it was, you know, they're very chummy there.
[00:29:55]  The Bidens are a household name, especially in Delaware at this point.
[00:29:59]  And Biden, I saw in your testimony yesterday, he'd actually been in the offices of the U.S. Attorney in Delaware.
[00:30:06]  He was glad handing with them in a way that, in a way that was personal and problematic in your view.
[00:30:12]  It wasn't U.S. Attorney's Office.
[00:30:14]  So I don't know if in my testimony I talked which office it would have been, but I do know that there were times to where he might have been coming into where one of our meetings was being held.
[00:30:29]  Yeah, so he having come into the FBI office on an unrelated matter and it was joked.
[00:30:36]  Right.
[00:30:37]  So you're getting it.
[00:30:38]  It feels a little hanky to you to bring it there, but this is where they're telling you.
[00:30:41]  Now, this brings me to the first, you know, the Democrats yesterday, as I said in the introduction, were Trump, Between 2018, when you first took on this case and, you know, January 2021, this was all a Trump DOJ that we're talking about.
[00:31:01]  So why would a Trump DOJ be anything other than motivated to investigate Hunter Biden?
[00:31:11]  Yes.
[00:31:12]  Yeah, go for it.
[00:31:13]  Yeah.
[00:31:14]  So ultimately, if there's some type of wrongdoing that occurred during the previous administration or during President Biden's administration, like, you know, that's not for us to determine, right?
[00:31:26]  Like, we're just bringing the facts forward because, you know, they're the facts and no one's been able to attack them or really nobody's really refuted them.
[00:31:35]  So, you know, it's clear.
[00:31:39]  And as I said in my testimony yesterday, that the Delaware U.S. Attorney's Office in 2020, and like between April and September of 2020, they eluded these search warrants to saying that there's no way that they would get those approved and things like statements like that, the juice worth a squeeze.
[00:32:01]  And that was during the previous administration.
[00:32:04]  But there's nothing to suggest that they even sent them up for approval.
[00:32:08]  I think that it stopped right there that they that's what you're talking about right now.
[00:32:14]  I'm sorry.
[00:32:15]  Are you talking about assistant U.S. Attorney in Delaware, Leslie Wolf?
[00:32:19]  Yeah, yeah, that's correct.
[00:32:21]  And, you know, there's, you know, that's something that DOJIG, and we've kind of pointed them in that way.
[00:32:25]  They need to look.
[00:32:26]  Like, is she just saying that she doesn't think it's going to get approved, but there's probable cause and we know there's evidence there?
[00:32:32]  And then, so she, but she doesn't raise it up to be approved.
[00:32:35]  And it just shows that U.S. Attorney Weiss did not, he had, his control was so limited in this case.
[00:32:42]  They required approval from so many different levels on absolutely everything.
[00:32:47]  And this is just one example of them holding off necessary investigative steps when the legal requirements were met and just, you know, just withholding it from senior leaders who were supposed to believe that the previous administration would be attacking his political rival.
[00:33:06]  But it just, it just, I don't think it ever got there.
[00:33:08]  You know, she just stopped it right there.
[00:33:10]  The Delaware U.S. Attorney's Office stopped it right there at their office.
[00:33:14]  Yeah, and I can I add something to that?
[00:33:15]  Like even a nuance of us doing a walkby, and I can recall my testimony saying that a walkby is essentially you want to walk past someone.
[00:33:26]  So you're not in any gear that identifies you at all.
[00:33:30]  You want to walk past someone's residence and to verify that they're home or what, whatever it might be.
[00:33:36]  And even that was U.S. Attorney agreed with it, but the leadership at DOJ Tax did not agree with it.
[00:33:44]  So again, I go back to, did U.S. Attorney David Weiss really have the authority here or was he being limited by other people in DOJ?
[00:33:55]  And is any of this normal, Gary?
[00:33:58]  I mean, that's the real question is for those of us on the outside, red tape, roadblocks, pain in the ass prosecutors, it doesn't sound that unusual, is it?
[00:34:09]  So, you know, I've worked in dozens of U.S. attorneys' offices across the country.
[00:34:14]  There are hundreds of prosecution recommendation reports.
[00:34:17]  To say that I haven't had disagreements with prosecutors in the past would just not be accurate.
[00:34:24]  But there's always that professional give and take.
[00:34:27]  And I've just never experienced, and I've always been able to maintain relationships with the assigned prosecutors where if there's a disagreement, that goes along with the discussion.
[00:34:38]  And you have a discussion and you explain each side.
[00:34:41]  And sometimes the investigators lose.
[00:34:44]  And that's fine.
[00:34:45]  And that happened countless times on this case.
[00:34:49]  It wasn't that we weren't able to do one thing or two things.
[00:34:53]  It was the pattern that was created.
[00:34:55]  And they just cannot deny once the facts come out that it was just that pattern over and over again that provided that preferential treatment.
[00:35:04]  And there are some sensitivities that this is a political figure and that the subject was an attorney, right?
[00:35:11]  But that doesn't mean that because you're a political figure or an attorney, that you're allowed to get away with a crime.
[00:35:16]  There are just additional steps that you have to take to get approvals to do these types of, like for a search warrant, for example.
[00:35:25]  And I've been a part of countless search warrants or undercover operations that deal with attorneys or sensitive people.
[00:35:35]  So I think ultimately they're going to blame that it was a sensitive person, but that doesn't give you a free pass to engage in criminal conduct and then obfuscate the investigation and not allow the investigative steps to take place.
[00:35:49]  This should take place.
[00:35:50]  Megan, can I add one more thing on this?
[00:35:52]  Yeah, please.
[00:35:54]  So I think it's important.
[00:35:56]  I brought up a lot yesterday, a special counsel, special counsel, special counsel.
[00:36:01]  And I think it's important for people to understand when you have a special counsel, their primary focus is that.
[00:36:08]  So they can focus all of their time and energy into that one matter.
[00:36:13]  We're working with U.S. attorneys that are U.S. assistant U.S. attorneys that are working 30, 40, tons of cases.
[00:36:22]  So they're already overwhelmed with a lot of their caseload.
[00:36:27]  And then they're having to work some of this stuff on top of it.
[00:36:31]  So from that perspective and that standpoint, the fact that even early on, we didn't have a special counsel in this matter when we started encountering a lot of the issues that we were having.
[00:36:43]  I mean, that is something that needs to, we need to go back and look at how can we have a way that if a team, an investigative team thinks that there is a need for a special counsel, how do we get that done?
[00:36:58]  Right, before all the problems crop up.
[00:37:00]  Right, because this had problem written all over it.
[00:37:03]  It's the son of the recent vice president and then soon of the sitting president.
[00:37:09]  And you guys recognize this could pose problems.
[00:37:12]  For the record, David Weiss is the U.S. attorney for Delaware.
[00:37:17]  He was not special counsel.
[00:37:19]  Merrick Garland has made that clear now.
[00:37:21]  But he, even though he was appointed under Trump, they kept him under Joe Biden and Merrick Garland.

=== Special Counsel Authority Needed (15:35) ===

[00:37:28]  They would tell us later so as not to sort of suggest that he's going to be a partisan hack and he's going to, like the new guy, they didn't want it to look like they got rid of Trump's U.S. attorney.
[00:37:39]  They replaced him with a Biden U.S. attorney and the fix is in.
[00:37:42]  And they would rely on this fact many, many times.
[00:37:44]  Merrick Garland has touted it before Congress.
[00:37:47]  You can trust David Weiss because he was a Trump appointee.
[00:37:51]  Ted Cruz has pointed out there is no way to get the U.S. attorney appointed without the support of the two sitting state senators who in Delaware are Democrats.
[00:38:01]  And so you cannot put total faith in David Weiss's nonpartisanship.
[00:38:06]  But just so that people know, he was not a special counsel.
[00:38:09]  And this is one of the issues that you're raising.
[00:38:10]  All right, let me take a quick break and then we come back.
[00:38:12]  We're going to get into how they not just slow rolled or put up obstacles for you, but actually seem to have thwarted your attempts at investigating by helping the Biden team, actively helping them.
[00:38:24]  Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler, stay with me for the full show.
[00:38:27]  We'll be right back.
[00:38:58]  Og to ekstra streamingtjenester som du velger helt selv.
[00:39:01]  HBO Max, Prime Video, Sky Showtime, you name it.
[00:39:05]  Du får underholdning til hele familien, og det fungerer overalt.
[00:39:09]  På mobilen i teltet, nettbrett i bilen, eller med Chromecast på hotell-tv-en etter en stranddag på Granka.
[00:39:16]  Alente fungerer i hele EU og EUS.
[00:39:19]  Alt du trenger er nett.
[00:39:21]  Og alente da.
[00:39:22]  Tre måneder, 79 kroner om måneden.
[00:39:24]  Null binding, bare TV og streaming akkurat sånn du vil ha det.
[00:39:29]  Gå inn på alente.no og test det i sommer.
[00:39:33]  Tilbudsprisen på 79 kroner får du i tre måneder.
[00:39:36]  Deretter gjelder normalpris på 499 kroner per måned.
[00:39:48]  So there comes a time at which you say you call it a day of action.
[00:39:53]  And this is where the investigation quote went overt.
[00:39:58]  It all sounds very kind of cool and clandestine.
[00:40:01]  And then you go overt, now Hunter Biden knows, or whoever the target is, knows the IRS is onto them.
[00:40:08]  And so this happened in your case on December 8th, 2020, as I understand it, guys.
[00:40:14]  And you wrote yesterday, Joe, you said that at the direction of this assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie Wolfe, she was under David Weiss, who's the U.S. Attorney for Delaware.
[00:40:22]  I prepared an affidavit in support of a search warrant for a storage unit in Northern Virginia.
[00:40:28]  Because after Hunter Biden vacated his DC office, some items went to a storage unit in Northern Virginia.
[00:40:34]  And you're looking for everything.
[00:40:36]  You're looking for documents supporting the returns that were filed.
[00:40:39]  You're looking for documents that might be the returns that weren't filed, you know, drafts and so on.
[00:40:44]  And you happen to know he's got this storage unit in Northern Virginia where he sent a bunch of stuff.
[00:40:48]  So you prepare an affidavit in support of a search warrant for that storage unit.
[00:40:52]  Leslie Wolfe tells you it could take some time to get approvals.
[00:40:56]  You say that is not normal.
[00:40:58]  And then what happened?
[00:40:59]  What happened?
[00:41:00]  Because that was an important unit you say to search, and you never got to search it.
[00:41:05]  Explain why.
[00:41:07]  Yeah, so in that situation, when we're looking to do a search warrant, you might find foreign records, you might find handwritten notes, you might find different things that can aid as evidence in your investigation.
[00:41:25]  And what so when we sent that up, they were like, yes, we'll work to get this approved.
[00:41:31]  And then a few days later, I get a phone call that says, well, we're not going to move forward with the warrant.
[00:41:38]  We are going to go ask his counsel to turn it over pursuant to the records request.
[00:41:45]  And I said to her, and I'm like, we can't do that.
[00:41:48]  That's not a normal process.
[00:41:50]  You told us that we were going to do it this way.
[00:41:53]  We're relying on him to turn over the records to us, which just doesn't make any sense.
[00:41:59]  And I said, well, what if we waited for 30 days?
[00:42:03]  Let's get this thing approved, however long that's going to take.
[00:42:07]  And if at the end of 30 days he doesn't comply with the records request, we know that he hasn't gone to that storage unit.
[00:42:15]  Let's execute the search warrant.
[00:42:16]  And her response was, we'll think about it.
[00:42:19]  And then my supervisor and our leadership had a phone call with David Weiss telling him about that plan.
[00:42:26]  He agreed on the phone that, yes, that's a great idea.
[00:42:29]  We'll do that.
[00:42:30]  And then we come to find out that they had notified.
[00:42:34]  So they being the assigned prosecutors.
[00:42:36]  Can I just pause you for one second?
[00:42:38]  Let me pause you for one second, Joe.
[00:42:39]  So what you're saying is you said, all right, you're not going to let us do a search warrant, which would have been totally appropriate under the circumstances.
[00:42:45]  But you said he's got a documents request.
[00:42:47]  Let's monitor that storage unit for 30 days, which is his deadline to reply to our documents request and see if he goes to it.
[00:42:54]  See if he's fulfilling his duty to respond fully to our documents request and get those documents out of that storage unit.
[00:43:01]  And if he doesn't, then we'll search warrant him.
[00:43:03]  And David Weiss said, who's her boss, Leslie Wolf, let's do that.
[00:43:07]  I like that plan.
[00:43:08]  Okay, keep going.
[00:43:10]  And then Gary can speak to that phone call.
[00:43:12]  So, yeah.
[00:43:13]  So I, you know, especially Ziegler told me about the situation.
[00:43:15]  So I raised that to United States Attorney Weiss with a senior executive on a line with me from the IRS.
[00:43:21]  And, you know, U.S. Attorney Weiss agreed with that plan.
[00:43:25]  And I think it was the same day, just a few hours later, that especially Ziegler called me up and said, you know, you won't believe this, but the prosecutors told the defense team about the search warrant.
[00:43:39]  So there, no, well, they told them about, just so you know, the records request we gave you includes the storage location that we now know about.
[00:43:49]  And I, and when that happened, I said, we don't have a seat at the table.
[00:43:54]  I said to her, I said to Leslie Wolf that I can't believe that that was done.
[00:43:59]  This is unethical.
[00:44:01]  This is wrong.
[00:44:02]  And her response to me was, well, are we going to have a problem working together from now on?
[00:44:06]  And it was almost to that point, I can recall talking to Gary about it, that I'm like, I'm just, this is just one thing after another that we're having to fight for.
[00:44:16]  And it just, at the end of the day, it gets exhausting.
[00:44:19]  And I don't want to sound like that.
[00:44:22]  But let me ask you, Joe, why, why isn't that a better way?
[00:44:26]  You want what's in the storage unit.
[00:44:28]  She basically went to them and said, give us what's in the storage unit or we're going to search warrant you.
[00:44:33]  Like, why is that bad?
[00:44:36]  So that's relying on them to turn over the records to us.
[00:44:40]  They now get to review the records and they, and then them being defense counsel would determine what we would get versus us, since he's an attorney, it has to go through a filter review.
[00:44:52]  So versus us reviewing the records and then the investigative team getting those files.
[00:44:58]  And how would you do it in a normal case?
[00:44:59]  If you were investigating Megan Kelly, how would you do it?
[00:45:03]  So for especially for a normal case, it's least intrusive means.
[00:45:08]  That's part of what goes into an analysis of getting a search warrant.
[00:45:12]  And with a storage unit, there's no one living there.
[00:45:15]  That is the least intrusive means of getting records other than a document request.
[00:45:21]  So the fact that we went from, yes, let's do it.
[00:45:25]  I will work to get to the approvals to what happened after.
[00:45:30]  And David Weiss agreed with us on it.
[00:45:33]  So, you know, and the senior leadership at IRS agreed as well and even sent emails that stated as such and that they were going to, that she at the time was going to go to our senior leadership and express her frustration that they weren't allowing us to do that search warrant.
[00:45:55]  This wasn't the only thing, though.
[00:45:56]  I mean, it was the collective, because I know one of the other allegations you guys have made is that you were told that you were not to interview Hunter Biden's adult children or members of the Biden family at all.
[00:46:09]  And you guys say that they were actually quite relevant to your investigation.
[00:46:13]  You would have absolutely interviewed them had this been somebody not named Biden.
[00:46:17]  So who told you that?
[00:46:18]  And what do you think that was about?
[00:46:22]  Yeah, so there were, I brought up in my transcript, a specific example of Valerie Owens.
[00:46:29]  And we talked about going and interviewing her.
[00:46:31]  There were transactions related to her.
[00:46:35]  And I believe Valerie Owens is related to Joe Biden.
[00:46:38]  I think it might be his sister.
[00:46:40]  But we wanted to go interview her.
[00:46:42]  And I can recall the AUSA Leslie Wolf or DOJ tax attorney Mark Daly telling us, no, we can't do that.
[00:46:51]  There were multiple interviews that we wanted to go do.
[00:46:55]  And I mean, it can be like at the end of the day, we were trying to expeditiously work this case, but in get it done in a timely manner.
[00:47:04]  And a lot of that was doing all these interviews, flying out to the West Coast.
[00:47:09]  And in my testimony, I talk about that we were planning for a month to go and do these interviews on the West Coast of some of the escorts.
[00:47:20]  And those interviews were held up because not U.S. Attorney David Weiss, but DOJ Tax senior management hadn't reviewed the records requests to allow me to go out to do those interviews.
[00:47:33]  And it just didn't make sense.
[00:47:34]  Why are they, I've never had in my career to where leadership in DOJ Tax was reviewing records requests for escorts, but just didn't make any sense.
[00:47:46]  It's beneath their pay grade.
[00:47:47]  I would imagine they'd be happy to pawn off those specific requests on you and just make sure that they get served so that you get your documents in advance of your interviews.
[00:47:55]  But here again, you were slow rolled, you were slowed down, and then ultimately they told you you couldn't do the interviews at the time you wanted to do them.
[00:48:03]  And back on the subject of Hunter's children, you said that there were expenses paid for the adult kids, as well as potential credit card expenditures and Venmo payments that were deducted on one year of his tax returns.
[00:48:15]  And that Leslie Wolf allegedly said to you in October of 21 that it would get, it will get us in hot water if we interview the president's grandchildren.
[00:48:26]  I mean, these are not toddlers.
[00:48:27]  These are adult children of hunters.
[00:48:31]  So she was worried.
[00:48:32]  What does she mean?
[00:48:32]  It'll get us in hot water.
[00:48:35]  So I mean, so there was the Columbia University tuition payment that was deducted directly on the tax returns.
[00:48:42]  So in any normal course of our investigation, if there are relatives either receiving payments or there are relatives receiving funds from a taxpayer that might be deducted on a tax return, normal course of action is to go and talk to those people.
[00:49:00]  That is what we would do in our normal job.
[00:49:03]  And the fact that they were saying that you can't go and interview these people, we'll just rely on these other facts.
[00:49:11]  I mean, that just didn't make any sense.
[00:49:13]  And I understand that there's political sensitivities to they are the grandchildren.
[00:49:18]  They might have Secret Service protection details.
[00:49:21]  So there are certain things that go into that, but to have an outright no, we don't think you should go do that or we're not going to prove you going to do that that didn't make any sense.
[00:49:33]  And Gary, you said too, that you were specifically told we're not going to be interviewing the big guy.
[00:49:38]  We're not going to be talking about the dad or the big guy.
[00:49:42]  Was that also Leslie Wolf?
[00:49:46]  In that specific instance, yes.
[00:49:51]  And it was really a recurring theme.
[00:49:53]  So on December 3rd, 2020, we're preparing for the day of action.
[00:49:58]  And that was where Assistant United States Attorney Leslie Wolfe said, you know, don't ask about the big guy.
[00:50:05]  You know, she also made statements about we're not asking questions about dad, but not asking questions about dad, I had heard multiple times from her, you know, throughout the investigation.
[00:50:17]  It's amazing.
[00:50:20]  Just stand by one second, hold that thought, Joe, because I have to squeeze in a break.
[00:50:22]  But yesterday we heard repeatedly, there's no evidence Joe Biden is involved in any of this.
[00:50:27]  There's no evidence Joe did anything wrong.
[00:50:29]  And of course, now we know exactly why.
[00:50:32]  You were not allowed to investigate Joe, even though he was mentioned in a lot of the Hunter transactions and documents and so on.
[00:50:40]  So it is not a defense now to say you have nothing against him.
[00:50:43]  You were not allowed to investigate those leads.
[00:50:46]  That's where we will pick it up right on the opposite side of this break.
[00:50:48]  Joe, hold that thought.
[00:50:49]  I'll get you to express it two minutes away.
[00:50:51]  Gary and Joe, stay with us.
[00:50:52]  And remember, folks, you can find the Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel.
[00:51:01]  That's youtube.com/slash Megan Kelly.
[00:51:04]  Audio podcast of the show available wherever you get your podcast for free.
[00:51:08]  We'll be right back.
[00:51:12]  Joe, you were going to make a point in our discussion about not questioning anyone about the big guy or dad as he was known.
[00:51:20]  Yeah, so there was definitely a situation, and this is even after the presidential campaign was done, that there were interviews we were doing, and it was kind of a very harsh environment that you were afraid to ask any questions that might touch the campaign.
[00:51:38]  And it was always a sense of that's going to take too much approval or that's going to take approvals.
[00:51:45]  We don't have those approvals.
[00:51:46]  So again, I go back to, are we limited to what DOJ is telling us, or is David Weiss really in charge of this, the person that Merrick Garland was saying was in charge of this case?
[00:51:58]  Okay, because Merrick Garland had come out repeatedly and suggested that David Weiss was in charge.
[00:52:08]  Here is Merrick Garland testifying before Congress April 2022, April 2022, appearing before Congress, assuring them about why they did not need to worry about any DOJ interference or about this investigation being conducted in an independent manner.
[00:52:27]  SOT 13.
[00:52:29]  Have you been briefed on the Hunter Biden investigation matter yourself, General Garland?
[00:52:33]  So the Hunter Biden investigation, as I said, even in my own nomination confirmation hearing, is being run by and supervised by the United States Attorney for the District of Delaware.
[00:52:46]  I'm aware of that, but he reports to you.
[00:52:48]  He is supervising the investigation.
[00:52:50]  And I'm not at liberty to talk about internal justice department deliberations, but he is in charge of that investigation.
[00:52:58]  There will not be interference of any political or improper kind.

=== Garland's Ultimate Authority (15:21) ===

[00:53:04]  How can the American people be confident that his administration is conducting a serious investigation?
[00:53:10]  Because we put the investigation in the hands of a Trump appointee from the previous administration.
[00:53:18]  So we're supposed to trust David Weiss, the guy running this, because he's a Trump guy.
[00:53:23]  He was a Trump appointee, and they relied on that many times.
[00:53:26]  Was that true in your view?
[00:53:28]  Was he trustworthy because he was a Trump appointee and was, as Merrick Garland said, quote, in charge of the investigation?
[00:53:36]  Yeah, look, it's clear that every DOJ employee that's going to answer any questions on this topic is going to immediately invoke this fact that it was a Trump appointed U.S. attorney.
[00:53:48]  But, Megan, when they put these witnesses in front of Congress, they're going to have to admit that they went to the President Biden-appointed U.S. attorney to look to charge in D.C. in March of 2022, which was one month before Attorney General Garland made those particular statements.
[00:54:10]  And Gary, let me just jump in and make that clear for our audience.
[00:54:12]  Stand by, stand by.
[00:54:13]  Because what you're saying is, yes, okay, David Weiss, he was running heard on this, but you needed to bring the charges you guys thought and the team agreed in DC and the Central District of California.
[00:54:26]  And that meant asking other U.S. attorneys outside of Delaware to cooperate in the investigation.
[00:54:32]  Those were Biden appointees.
[00:54:34]  Those were Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys.
[00:54:36]  And you were turned down in both instances, which is something that they've been obfuscating on since you guys came forward.
[00:54:43]  Continue.
[00:54:45]  Yeah, that's correct.
[00:54:46]  And they're going to have to admit they went to DC, right?
[00:54:48]  As I said before, and they're going to have to admit that they went to a Central District of California to request approval there.
[00:54:55]  So as U.S. Attorney Weiss's stories have changed in his ongoing letters, you know, he's going to say, well, I asked him to partner.
[00:55:04]  But when the key point from DOJ is how you can trust the American people that trust this investigation is that it's being run by a Trump appointed U.S. attorney.
[00:55:16]  And you go to a President Biden appointed U.S. attorney once, not once, but twice.
[00:55:22]  I mean, it's just on its face, it's just a clear misrepresentation of the level of authority that he has.
[00:55:30]  And I want to be clear with that tat, like the reason why they did 2014 and 15 first almost immediately once they got my prosecution report is the statute of limitations for those years were set to expire later on that year.
[00:55:46]  So it was important that we went to that U.S. attorney's office and started to get this rolling because we were running up against that deadline.
[00:55:54]  Right, exactly.
[00:55:55]  Because we're looking at taxes, tax charges for 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, as I said, and you're running up against it on the 14 ones, which were serious, which were very serious.
[00:56:06]  So, and I want to get to everything that Merrick Garland is saying now and what David Weiss, how he's trying to defend himself, but let's just finish with a couple of the items on how you feel that they interfered.
[00:56:18]  You say that you went to them, that everybody agreed, okay, we're going to charge.
[00:56:23]  We're going to charge in DC and everyone wants to do this.
[00:56:28]  And that you then went to this U.S. attorney, Matthew Graves.
[00:56:31]  He was the attorney by this point for DC.
[00:56:34]  And he not only said, no, I don't want to partner with you.
[00:56:37]  He also said, and you shouldn't do it either.
[00:56:41]  And basically, this is the president's man trying to kill your case in DC.
[00:56:44]  And that, Joe, right after that, you stopped talking about DC.
[00:56:48]  It wasn't like David Weiss said, oh, no, no, no, I've got this special attorney designation and Matthew Graves cannot shut us down.
[00:56:55]  I've been assured by Merritt Garland, I am in charge.
[00:56:58]  We will be bringing these charges in DC because they are the most serious, the ones from 14 and 15.
[00:57:04]  And I'm sorry he doesn't want to partner with us, but he's not making the decisions.
[00:57:07]  That did not happen.
[00:57:10]  Yeah, so at that point, it kind of went back to, well, this is in David's hands now.
[00:57:17]  That's how it was communicated to us.
[00:57:20]  And now we essentially had to reinvestigate the 2014 and 15 tax years.
[00:57:26]  And then through our reinvestigation, we found the mechanism for the 2014 allegations that we presented in our transcript of essentially what happened.
[00:57:42]  So one thing that I want to add on the DC U.S. Attorney's Office is that Gary and I requested multiple times to present on the evidence and the facts in my prosecution report to that U.S. attorney's office and we were denied.
[00:57:55]  And that is not, in cases I've worked, you want the people who know the evidence the best to present to the prosecutors.
[00:58:04]  He didn't want to hear it.
[00:58:05]  This is Biden's guy who understands very well.
[00:58:07]  It's not very good for his career.
[00:58:09]  He indicts Biden's son.
[00:58:11]  Can we pause here and can you explain to us what the hell is Hunter Biden doing?
[00:58:15]  What were you finding?
[00:58:17]  What were you finding about Burisma, the Ukrainian company, the Chinese?
[00:58:22]  Like, what it kind of morphed from he's paying for hookers and trying to claim those business write-offs to something far more disturbing.
[00:58:32]  You want to talk about 2014 to 2015?
[00:58:37]  Well, you know, what he was doing to make this money, right?
[00:58:42]  We really didn't get into in a transcripts, but I can say that for 2014, for all the prosecutors and investigators to agree to with those felony charges, at least for 14.
[00:58:59]  And, you know, then David, U.S. Attorney Weiss is asking the U.S. Attorney to partner with him on that.
[00:59:06]  I mean, I wouldn't think that U.S. Attorney Weiss would ask him to partner on something that he himself didn't agree with.
[00:59:12]  But with 14 going away, what that does to the public record in this case is that it completely removes the Burisma Ukraine conduct.
[00:59:25]  And without that in there, really, this most substantive conduct related to his evasion, at least in the early years, would have gone not outside of public view.
[00:59:40]  And he just simply didn't pay.
[00:59:41]  He's never paid the taxes on the Burisma income from that year.
[00:59:48]  And this, by the way, may or may not relate, but we were told that the FBI had a report from a confidential informant.
[00:59:56]  It's been referenced in this form 1023 that Congress recently got its hands on, alleging bribery of Joe Biden when he was sitting vice president from a foreign national.
[01:00:10]  And we're told that this relates allegedly to Ukraine, law enforcement telling NBC, not by name, anonymously, oh, it was not substantiated.
[01:00:21]  We could not substantiate it.
[01:00:22]  But did anybody in the context of your investigation, which now is taking over to Ukraine and Hunter Biden and who knows potentially dad in 2014, did anybody say to you?
[01:00:31]  Because you're working with the FBI every day on this intimately, hey, you should know about this form 1023.
[01:00:40]  Yeah, and I mean, I think I produced a supplement that I never saw that 1023.
[01:00:46]  And I'm the lead case agent from the IRS.
[01:00:48]  And the fact that I didn't have that information that could have corroborated other evidence that we had in our possession, I mean, that's where it's, for me, when I heard that and I saw that, it was frustrating.
[01:01:02]  Yeah, it was definitely frustrating.
[01:01:04]  Wow.
[01:01:05]  I mean, because the Ukraine dealings are obviously big.
[01:01:07]  I did hear you say yesterday, what we're talking about, $30 million of income for Hunter Biden over these years from these, from the Chinese, from the Ukrainians, from the Romanians.
[01:01:17]  So I think the number I said was $17.3 million paid to all of the associated entities or associates of Hunter Biden.
[01:01:29]  Wow.
[01:01:30]  Wow.
[01:01:32]  And there's a real question about how they were documented and whether he paid everything he needs to pay on it and whether anybody in the Biden family did.
[01:01:41]  Okay, so just to go back to the timeline, there you guys are.
[01:01:43]  You get stymied by the district, by the U.S. Attorney in DC, which is where 14 and 15 would have to be tried.
[01:01:50]  So that case is either dying or David Weiss, the guy in Delaware who says he's the all-powerful guy, is going to have to revive them somehow.
[01:01:59]  And he could do that potentially by going to Merrick Garland.
[01:02:02]  This is the story they're both now claiming.
[01:02:04]  Right now, David Weiss and Merrick Garland are both saying he was what we call a special attorney, not special counsel who can do whatever he wants without Merrick Garland, but special attorney, which allows him to just go to Merrick Garland and say, hey, can I do it on my own?
[01:02:17]  The DC guy won't cooperate.
[01:02:19]  And totally he could have done it.
[01:02:21]  But that's not what happened here.
[01:02:23]  We know that for a fact.
[01:02:24]  He did not try to go over anybody's head.
[01:02:26]  He did not bring the charges.
[01:02:28]  At least we know that for a fact, Gary.
[01:02:30]  So this whole new thing that he's now claiming that, oh, I was a special attorney and I did have the ability, just had to get the check from Merrick Garland.
[01:02:38]  As far as we know, that's not what he even attempted to do when he got rejected by DC.
[01:02:44]  So yeah, even in DOJ's letters and statements about this, they contradict each other.
[01:02:51]  And if you look at an early letter from U.S. Attorney Weiss on June 7th, 2023, he's saying he has ultimate authority.
[01:03:01]  And that could be easily proven.
[01:03:03]  If he has ultimate authority, where's the document?
[01:03:07]  Where's the DOJ document giving him that ultimate authority?
[01:03:10]  Because ultimate authority isn't just a verbal, verbal thing.
[01:03:13]  If he gets special counsel, special attorney authority, there would definitely be a record of that.
[01:03:18]  But now you also, now after we testify and in front of the House Ways and Means Committee, and DOJ learns of the evidence that we provided in that hearing, now their story starts to change.
[01:03:33]  And they start providing very lawyered words in the June 30th letter that says, oh, well, no, I agree with what I said on June 7th.
[01:03:44]  But now he changes his story as he's saying that he's trying to explain more.
[01:03:49]  So am I getting the cart in front of the horse, Megan?
[01:03:52]  Do you want me to go into that?
[01:03:53]  A little bit, a little bit.
[01:03:54]  I want to get to the Weiss and Garland and what a hot mess they've been in trying to respond to you guys coming forward.
[01:04:00]  It's actually kind of fun to watch them dance.
[01:04:02]  You guys have not changed at all.
[01:04:04]  You have your straightforward story.
[01:04:05]  You have documents backing it up.
[01:04:07]  This guy Weiss has been dancing on the head of a pin since we first learned your names.
[01:04:13]  Okay, so just to go back, because I think if you see what they did, it's to me, it's shocking.
[01:04:18]  So you get rejected in DC.
[01:04:19]  David Weiss notably does not come forward and say, I'm the decider and I'm going to bring the charges anyway in DC.
[01:04:27]  That is not what happened.
[01:04:29]  And then the next thing you know, you're all focused on California.
[01:04:32]  All right, 14 and 15 aren't happening, I guess.
[01:04:34]  Although you say, Joe, you were given the chance to make one more appeal to David Weiss, like, please don't abandon 1415.
[01:04:40]  I want, let me be heard one more time.
[01:04:42]  But you're focused on Central District of California and the later years, 17, 18, 19.
[01:04:47]  And then you say in August of 2022, the federal prosecutors, not you, the federal prosecutors recommending approving, recommended approving felony and misdemeanor charges for years 2017, 18, and 19 in the Central District of California.
[01:05:03]  So you got the prosecutors on board, August of 2022.
[01:05:06]  It's going to be felonies.
[01:05:07]  It's going to be Central District of California.
[01:05:10]  Everyone's agreed.
[01:05:12]  And what happens with the Central District of California?
[01:05:18]  Yeah, so from so at that point, when we've heard about what, so I guess let's step back a little bit.
[01:05:25]  We know that the information went to the Central District of California in mid-September of 2022.
[01:05:34]  That was the first week that Mr. Estrada, so the U.S. attorney in Central District, was essentially appointed to that U.S. attorney by President Biden.
[01:05:45]  So the first thing he gets on his desk is this case.
[01:05:50]  And we had communication that we were getting ready to work this in that district.
[01:05:59]  And in that early September meeting with David Weiss, he said to us, hopefully by the end of this month, we're going to get ready to charge the case.
[01:06:08]  And to go from there to hearing in early 2023 from both people I've talked with in the FBI and my leadership in the IRS that the California U.S. Attorney's Office said no.
[01:06:25]  Well, and so you didn't know that.
[01:06:26]  So here you are in August, September 2022, and David Weiss is saying, yes, California, we're going to California.
[01:06:33]  We're going to bring felony charges against Hunter Biden in California.
[01:06:37]  And then comes the October 2022 meeting.
[01:06:40]  And this is a very important meeting in this whole story.
[01:06:44]  This is the one that Gary documented right after it happened because he realized he was playing with plutonium in what was being told to him at this meeting by David Weiss.
[01:06:53]  You're waiting for charges.
[01:06:54]  Central District of California.
[01:06:55]  Let's do it.
[01:06:56]  Felony.
[01:06:58]  And so you meet you guys, you, Gary, from IRS, you say IRSCI, criminal investigation, FBI leadership, and David Weiss, the guy who's representing that he's the decider.
[01:07:10]  He's in charge.
[01:07:11]  But the message changed at this meeting.
[01:07:14]  So tell us about the October meeting of 2022.
[01:07:19]  Sure, yeah.
[01:07:19]  And I can't understate enough how one side seems to completely leave out the part that this was a contemporaneous document.
[01:07:31]  I took handwritten notes during it.
[01:07:34]  I went home and later at 6.09 p.m., I put this in an email on October 7th to two senior executives above me, one of which was at that meeting.
[01:07:45]  And you can clearly read the document and it says I'm asking for, hey, is this how you understand it?
[01:07:50]  Is there anything that this that you understand differently?
[01:07:53]  And what one side, it just is completely kind of missed the point that the senior execut, the other senior executive there corroborated it saying, thanks, Gary, you covered it all.
[01:08:05]  So now we have two, so there's seven people there, three from Delaware U.S. Attorney's Office, four from two from FBI, two from IRS.
[01:08:15]  And two of those investigative agencies who were there, two people, they've corroborated, that document corroborates exactly what happened during that meeting.

=== Deciding Official Confusion (13:54) ===

[01:08:25]  And I can't understand, understate that enough.
[01:08:28]  So he says, I'm not the deciding official on whether charges are brought or not.
[01:08:34]  He says that DC U.S. Attorney's Office declined to allow him to bring charges.
[01:08:39]  That's when he says that he requested special counsel authority and he was denied that special counsel authority.
[01:08:46]  Then he also opines that, you know, it's at California with Martin Estrada, the President Biden appointed U.S. Attorney.
[01:08:54]  And if he says no, then I'm going to have to request that a special counsel authority again.
[01:09:00]  So it's just clearly was a huge moment for me.
[01:09:04]  And there are facts that I learned during that meeting that's been corroborated by two of the seven people there of what happened contemporaneously.
[01:09:16]  So this is the first year realizing, Gary, he is not in charge, that what we heard from Merrick Garland repeatedly is not true.
[01:09:24]  And in particular, I should play the sound bite now of Merrick Garland saying that this is, well, actually, I'll pause on that.
[01:09:33]  But in particular, Merrick Garland's assertions that David Weiss had full authority and that we could trust him because he had full authority and that the DOJ would not be interfering was not true, according to David Weiss.
[01:09:46]  Yeah, Megan.
[01:09:47]  And it's a small distinction there, but this is not the point that I learned that he wasn't in charge because it's clear.
[01:09:57]  There's a pattern of steps previously that indicate that he was not the deciding person, that they were using the process to slow this down and it had to go to someone else other than David Weiss for approval, many investigative steps.
[01:10:10]  This was the point in time that David Weiss admitted that he was not in charge.
[01:10:16]  Right.
[01:10:17]  Which again, now he's denying.
[01:10:19]  Now he's back to, I was in charge, Merrick Garland saying he was in charge, but this is the moment at which he admits to you and six others, I'm not really in charge.
[01:10:28]  And actually, I went to Merrick Garland to ask for special counsel status and it was denied.
[01:10:33]  Your memo says heiss stated that he is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.
[01:10:43]  You said he requested special counsel authority when it was sent to DC, and Maine Justice denied his request.
[01:10:52]  Again, you don't yet know at this meeting that he's been denied in California too, but you know he's been denied in DC and you say he says he went, he went for special account authority when it was sent to DC and Maine Justice denied his request.
[01:11:08]  You know, it just, it's, it's fascinating to me because, you know, I don't, none of this is consistent with what he's now saying.
[01:11:18]  Now he's saying he had this special status of not special counsel, but special attorney, which would have allowed him to prosecute anywhere just as long as he had the blessing of Merrick Garland.
[01:11:29]  But why would he tell you that he requested special counsel authority if he already had special attorney status?
[01:11:36]  And if what he really meant to say was, I have special attorney status and I just need to, you know, get this approved by Merrick Garland, then why didn't he?
[01:11:45]  Do I have the questions right, Gary?
[01:11:48]  Yeah, there's also a distinction there, right?
[01:11:50]  Because Attorney General Garland is saying that he has that authority, that he has special authority, that he has some superpower, special authority, even greater than special counsel authority.
[01:12:02]  And David Weiss's June 7th letter alludes to that.
[01:12:05]  Like, oh, yeah, that what Attorney General Garland said was correct.
[01:12:09]  Now, his June 30th letter, he clearly says that he doesn't have that authority, that he's been assured that he would get that authority.
[01:12:17]  So, no, he didn't have that authority.
[01:12:19]  And even in those letters, his words match what I said.
[01:12:23]  He said, oh, well, I talked to somebody at Maine DOJ about this special authority, which in my contemporaneous memo says that he was denied by Maine DOJ.
[01:12:38]  So it's just.
[01:12:39]  So let me zoom out here.
[01:12:40]  Let me zoom out for people who are getting confused.
[01:12:43]  What's really going on here, Gary?
[01:12:45]  Try to bottom line.
[01:12:46]  Like, what's happening that Merrick Garland wants us to believe David Weiss is empowered when in fact he's not.
[01:12:52]  Merrick Garland and his Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys are making the decisions.
[01:12:58]  That David Weiss now admits this to you in this meeting, that you realize this is being controlled and decided by political people, not by this sort of Trump appointee independent guy that we thought.
[01:13:13]  Is that what's happening here?
[01:13:16]  So look, look, look, I don't want to apply motives or conspiracy theory or whatever you want to call it to the overarching issue that's happening here.
[01:13:25]  I'm a criminal investigator and it's all about facts.
[01:13:28]  We follow the facts and the facts don't match what they're saying.
[01:13:32]  So I'm not going to say why if Attorney General Garland knew that he provided false information at the time or if he just wasn't informed.
[01:13:41]  You know, that's for the IGs and for Congress to investigate.
[01:13:46]  But I do know that the facts clearly do not support what they're saying.
[01:13:51]  If David Weiss is in charge, you don't need to go ask another Biden-appointed U.S. attorney for anything.
[01:13:57]  And that happened twice.
[01:13:59]  And, you know, it's just, the facts don't support their story.
[01:14:04]  And just so the audience knows, here's Merrick Garland.
[01:14:07]  Again, it wasn't just at that April 2022 hearing where he said, you can trust him because he's a Trump appointee and he is in charge.
[01:14:14]  I'm quoting.
[01:14:14]  That's what he said.
[01:14:15]  He is in charge.
[01:14:16]  Here he is in March of 2023, just a couple months ago before you guys came forward, doubling down on that message, SA 14.
[01:14:25]  I have pledged not to interfere with that investigation, and I have carried through on my pledge.
[01:14:32]  The U.S. Attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority to make those kind of referrals that you're talking about or to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it's necessary.
[01:14:44]  And I will assure that if he does, he will be able to do that.
[01:14:49]  He has full authority to bring charges in different jurisdictions.
[01:14:53]  That is not what David Weiss told you in October 2022.
[01:14:59]  No, no, and it doesn't match what David Weiss said later on in a letter that he's been assured that they need it.
[01:15:07]  And he'd get it if, and they assured him that he'd get it if he thinks it's necessary.
[01:15:11]  Well, if you ask a U.S. attorney to partner with you and they say no, I mean, I think it's logical to assume that it would then be necessary to invoke this special authority that you've been given.
[01:15:26]  Well, and here's where the audience needs to know.
[01:15:28]  They're getting very slippery on their language, Weiss and Garland.
[01:15:31]  Weiss is now saying after you guys came forward, well, yeah, I have, I have this ability to go to Garland and get this blessing.
[01:15:41]  And if I need it, I will use it.
[01:15:44]  But he has not yet said, I tried.
[01:15:48]  I already did it.
[01:15:49]  I went after I got denied by DC.
[01:15:52]  I went after I got denied by California.
[01:15:54]  And here's what Merrick Garland told me.
[01:15:56]  That he has not said that.
[01:15:58]  He was not specifically asked that either, which was a failing by the questioners.
[01:16:02]  But why isn't he just telling us?
[01:16:04]  There is no reason for him not to just come out and say, if he has the special authority today, did he have it back in October of 2022?
[01:16:12]  Why didn't he use it when he got the stiff arm in not one, but two jurisdictions where he wanted to bring felonies, right?
[01:16:19]  He's not, those are questions we do not yet have answered.
[01:16:23]  Am I right, Gary?
[01:16:25]  Yeah, yeah, and that's what Congress needs to ensure happens is that there's documents.
[01:16:30]  Like I said earlier, special authority, special counsel, they're just different words for requiring some special authority to charge.
[01:16:40]  So if that happened, there's documents.
[01:16:44]  There's me, you know, if I was going to investigate this, you know, I would ask those questions.
[01:16:48]  Where are the documents?
[01:16:50]  Where's the memo that DOJ produced?
[01:16:55]  The 99-page memo that's taking him to the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. and California.
[01:17:00]  What are the different versions of that?
[01:17:02]  Let's see that.
[01:17:03]  So there are going to be documents.
[01:17:05]  And one day, I just, I'm assuring the American people that when they stop hiding behind this deliberative process or ongoing investigation, they are not going to be able to hide the fact that they went to two President Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys and that no charges were brought in either of those districts tells the American people exactly what happened.
[01:17:30]  Yes, because you guys have the documents showing these very attorneys, David Weiss and the FBI and so on.
[01:17:39]  You had all agreed to bring felonies.
[01:17:41]  That's what you wanted done.
[01:17:43]  Felonies against Hunter Biden.
[01:17:45]  At first you wanted DC, then you got rejected, then Central District of California.
[01:17:50]  That was the plan.
[01:17:51]  He said we're going to bring him by the end of September 2022.
[01:17:54]  And then suddenly in October of 2022, he says to you, I'm not the deciding person.
[01:18:00]  I'm not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.
[01:18:03]  Whoa, what?
[01:18:04]  What do you mean you're not the deciding person on whether charges are filed?
[01:18:08]  And now they're trying to split hairs on, well, special counsel or special attorney, maybe you were confused, Gary, in what you wrote.
[01:18:15]  None of that matters.
[01:18:16]  What you wrote in this memo is Weiss stated he is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.
[01:18:21]  No one cares about his title.
[01:18:24]  He's not the deciding person.
[01:18:26]  We were told by Merrick Garland that he was.
[01:18:28]  So which is it?
[01:18:30]  Merrick Garland continues to try to tell us that he was the deciding person.
[01:18:34]  You stand by your story that he told you he wasn't.
[01:18:36]  You've got six witnesses who can back you up on this.
[01:18:39]  It matters because we're talking about whether there really are two systems of justice here: one for the regular guys and one for the guys whose last name is Biden.
[01:18:49]  And frankly, that two-tiered system has Trump has charges against Donald Trump right now that people think are born out of similar political motivations.
[01:18:58]  That's a story for another day.
[01:19:00]  So the thing that happens next after that October 22 meeting, as I understand it, is a whole lot of nothing.
[01:19:07]  They stop communicating.
[01:19:08]  They kind of go quiet, Joe.
[01:19:10]  And then the next thing you find out is May of 2023, you're being removed.
[01:19:16]  You're off.
[01:19:17]  You're off the case.
[01:19:18]  And then we get the announcement the very next month: oh, there's been a plea deal, two misdemeanors.
[01:19:25]  There's some felony charge on the gun application, which is just basically not getting punished for.
[01:19:31]  But the only tax charges are misdemeanors, which violates DOJ policy, which goes against the agreement you got from the prosecutors, which is inconsistent with anything that you investigated or talked with the authorities on the case about from the beginning to the point you were removed a couple months earlier.
[01:19:49]  Yeah, I mean, that's correct.
[01:19:52]  And I mean, what was presented, that charging document, I mean, at the end of the day, that was David's decision to do that.
[01:20:01]  But what I've asked yesterday is the DOJ needs to make a decision: was that charging document appropriate for what happened throughout this investigation?
[01:20:14]  And if it's a special counsel that comes in there and looks at it, if it, whatever it might be, I think that that, a little bit of that, would restore our faith in our justice system.
[01:20:28]  The news hit in June that they had struck this deal with Hunter.
[01:20:34]  And again, you guys had been removed from the case.
[01:20:36]  What was your reaction when you saw that it was after all that to basically slap on the wrist misdemeanors?
[01:20:46]  Yeah, I mean, when I saw the charging document, I really didn't have much feeling one way or the other.
[01:20:56]  This isn't about Hunter Biden.
[01:20:58]  This is bigger than Hunter Biden.
[01:21:00]  And I want to make that clear to everyone.
[01:21:03]  This is issues, unethical behavior, not following normal process.
[01:21:11]  This was something that was wrong in the way we investigated this case.
[01:21:17]  And my fear is, and I've said this in my testimony, that there's other ancillary spin-off investigations that the same thing might happen where David Weiss has to go to another U.S. attorney to get charging authority to charge in that district.
[01:21:35]  And the same thing is going to happen again and again until we fix the problem.
[01:21:42]  What is the problem?
[01:21:43]  I mean, how would you define it?
[01:21:46]  So, Yeah, I don't know the problem, the problem that I would is the fact that you need to have a neutral party in there, someone who is going to follow the facts, who is not going to be hamstrung by DOJ officials.
[01:22:06]  They're going to follow the evidence and then charge the appropriate charges in the appropriate venues.
[01:22:13]  That's essentially what the appropriate procedure would have been.

=== Obfuscating the Evidence (15:42) ===

[01:22:20]  What's crazy is we've talked about the fact that nobody told you about that FBI confidential informant form that had serious allegations of bribery against the Bidens.
[01:22:30]  No one told you, is it correct?
[01:22:33]  Nobody, did they tell you about the laptop?
[01:22:38]  Because, you know, we understood that the FBI had found the Hunter Biden laptop.
[01:22:43]  It had been given to them by the repair shop owner who had it.
[01:22:49]  And that by November of 19, November of 2019, they had verified that it was Hunter's.
[01:22:55]  Your investigation opened in November of 18.
[01:22:58]  So did they come to you and say, you should look at what's on this laptop?
[01:23:03]  There's a lot of stuff on here.
[01:23:08]  Yeah, so, you know, in fact, they did take possession of that laptop.
[01:23:14]  And because it was a tax investigation and especially Ziegler was in charge of that tax investigation, the way that the contents of that laptop were even retrieved and were available to the investigators was through an IRS criminal investigation affiant search warrant.
[01:23:34]  So it was the tax information that got the information from the laptop.
[01:23:40]  And then, you know, we documented contemporaneously and provided to the House Ways and Means Committee a memo that of a meeting that discussed that laptop where it comes to light to Special Agent Ziegler and I that there's certain portions from that laptop that prosecutors chose not to share with Special Agent Ziegler.
[01:24:01]  And, you know, that's just that usually after, say, like a filter review for any privilege information comes out of the electronic device, that that's the investigator's job.
[01:24:12]  The rest of the evidence goes to the investigator.
[01:24:14]  And that's what the investigators are doing.
[01:24:15]  And they're putting that together and they're bringing to the to the prosecutors to tell the prosecutors what's there.
[01:24:23]  In this case, the prosecutors completely removed some of the information from the investigators' purview, as Leslie Wolf stated during that meeting in, I believe it was October of 2020.
[01:24:38]  So you got to see some of it, but you didn't get to see all of it.
[01:24:41]  And you guys are the ones putting the case together.
[01:24:43]  Why wouldn't they be sharing all of it with you?
[01:24:48]  Yeah, so the laptop had to go through what's called, since he's an attorney, it had to go through a filter review first.
[01:24:56]  And then from the filter review team, it would be filtered down to us.
[01:24:59]  But the problem was, is that there were additional things that would have been found outside of filter that weren't being shared with us.
[01:25:08]  It was admitted in that meeting that it wasn't being shared with us.
[01:25:12]  And the problem is, is you need to tell us what you're holding back from us, not that you held back information from us, but what is it?
[01:25:20]  So there's that final step that wasn't provided to us.
[01:25:24]  And that I think is a problem.
[01:25:27]  And if it's consistent with the rest of the investigative steps that we weren't allowed to take, where we're not allowed to ask about dad and we're not allowed to follow certain investigative leads, it's entirely possible that there's information on there that could have been about dad that they kept from the investigators.
[01:25:47]  Just for just FYI, this is the first I had actually heard it described, how the FBI verified that it was Hunter's from you, Gary.
[01:25:55]  They verified its authenticity by matching the device number against Hunter Biden's Apple iCloud ID.
[01:26:03]  They knew, they knew it was his.
[01:26:06]  I mean, it's just relevant to the other stories about how they went to all the social media companies and said, beware Russian disinformation about Hunter may be about to drop.
[01:26:16]  And they knew that wasn't true.
[01:26:18]  They absolutely understood that the laptop was Hunter's and yet still ran around telling the social media companies that.
[01:26:25]  I mean, I did not realize that they knew it from, it matched his actual Apple Cloud ID.
[01:26:30]  In any event, back to you guys.
[01:26:33]  So one of the other things that you testified about was that now infamous WhatsApp message.
[01:26:40]  Joe, can you tell the audience as the lead agent on this case, how did you get your hands on the WhatsApp message?
[01:26:46]  Because Abby Lowell, who represents Hunter, is out there trying to make us believe it's all fake, that there is no WhatsApp message, that it's all made up.
[01:26:57]  But you know differently.
[01:27:00]  So yeah, we did an IRS CI affian search warrant of Hunter's Apple iCloud account, and we obtained records via that.
[01:27:11]  And what was turned over from that was one of the things was a backup from a device.
[01:27:18]  And essentially, information within that backup was summarized in a schedule that was presented in Gary's testimony, which you have now seen.
[01:27:30]  So that's why there's writing in there that is quotes and reference to individuals.
[01:27:37]  So this is the one that explained it.
[01:27:42]  That's July 2017, WhatsApp message sent by Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, a Chinese Communist Party official.
[01:27:48]  That's that's what we understand.
[01:27:50]  Abby Lowell now is questioning some of this.
[01:27:52]  He writes, I'm sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.
[01:27:58]  Tell the director I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand and now means tonight.
[01:28:02]  And Z, if I get a call or a text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, 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.
[01:28:15]  I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.
[01:28:20]  This is something I would imagine that you would like to follow through on to see what, what, if any role did the father have?
[01:28:26]  What exactly are they talking about?
[01:28:28]  Abby Lowell comes out and says, oh, this is fake, that the text message that was sort of mocked up, the WhatsApp message that we've seen online is fake.
[01:28:40]  He notably doesn't say that the actual exchange did not happen.
[01:28:44]  So what's your understanding?
[01:28:45]  Did the actual exchange happen via WhatsApp?
[01:28:49]  So that's also a distinction in Abby Willow's letter.
[01:28:53]  It's really a way to obfuscate the issues.
[01:28:56]  He's not saying that the content isn't accurate.
[01:28:59]  He's saying that the way it was displayed was inaccurate and it's a fake representation.
[01:29:04]  And there's a lot of legal posturing and words there.
[01:29:11]  He never denied that the contents of that are accurate.
[01:29:15]  He's just saying that the way that it was shown was somehow indicate that it's also a fake.
[01:29:22]  It's really just insinuation.
[01:29:25]  So we believe you saw the WhatsApp message, Joe.
[01:29:28]  I mean, you got your hands on this via a search warrant from the cloud.
[01:29:33]  That is correct.
[01:29:35]  Right.
[01:29:36]  And again, Abby Lowell, while he tries to mislead us, does not actually deny that the content of it.
[01:29:42]  He just tries to say, oh, well, what you've seen online is fake and that's not real.
[01:29:46]  Shows he's being dishonest.
[01:29:47]  He's also really trying to attack the two of you.
[01:29:50]  Um, he's yeah.
[01:29:52]  So in in my in my testimony I actually talk about the location data related to the whatsapp messages.
[01:29:59]  So I refer to the whatsapp messages in my testimony and I said relevant to those messages.
[01:30:05]  We went to the prosecutors and were like we need to get the location data to confirm that the information in this um, in this um whatsapp message, is accurate.
[01:30:16]  And her response was, well, how do we know that?
[01:30:19]  And then it was, uh well, i'll think about it.
[01:30:22]  And I think it's important to note that three or four months prior to this, there was the email that was found that said, tell, 10 held by h for the big guy, and that referenced Sinohawk.
[01:30:34]  So that's one of the Chinese deals that never went through.
[01:30:37]  And then now, three months later, you have this communication where he's representing that his father is sitting there with him.
[01:30:44]  There was a question about this yesterday.
[01:30:48]  Dan Goldman tried to suggest there's nothing in any of these documents showing any sort of potential business that involved Joe Biden.
[01:30:56]  Uh, that I don't think this particularly went well for Dan Goldman, but we have a bit of it at SOT 12.
[01:31:02]  Hunter told his dad, according to Rob Walker quote, I may be trying to start a company or try to do something with these guys.
[01:31:12]  Now let me ask you something.
[01:31:13]  That doesn't sound much like Joe Biden was involved in whatever Hunter Biden was doing with the CEFC.
[01:31:20]  If Hunter Biden is telling him that he's trying to do business with them, does it no?
[01:31:27]  But it does show that he said he told his father he was trying to do business.
[01:31:33]  Can you expand on that, Gary?
[01:31:37]  Look, you know, we've tried to stick to the facts and we show the facts and and we let other people come up with conclusions.
[01:31:45]  But the congressman from New York uh, uh was trying to manipulate the facts there.
[01:31:50]  That kind of fit his narrative and uh, you can see that that that definitely uh didn't go his way there.
[01:31:57]  Because, you know, I just went back to the fact it clearly shows that um, this witness said that Hunter Biden is talking to his father president By well, at the time um, he was the uh former vice president, but is talking to him about his businesses.
[01:32:15]  So that's clearly uh, not not what president Biden has said over and over and over again.
[01:32:22]  And moreover, he says to you, can you show me where in the text message it says anything about discussing business with Joe Biden.
[01:32:28]  He asked you that.
[01:32:29]  Well, the one we just read the other whatsapp message says specifically, i'm sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment has not been fulfilled that, on its face, is discussing business involving Joe Biden.
[01:32:44]  Um, Dan Goldman fell on his face yesterday and trying to exonerate Joe Biden from having anything to do with any of these business dealings.
[01:32:51]  It remains a question.
[01:32:52]  We don't know the answer because again, you weren't allowed to pursue it.
[01:32:57]  Quick break more with what's happened to these two guys after they came forward in a minute.
[01:33:03]  They're still at the IRS.
[01:33:04]  Can you imagine?
[01:33:05]  We'll ask how that's going.
[01:33:06]  Don't go away.
[01:33:10]  Just to put a point on it, the defense yesterday by a lot of the Democrats was: you guys are just the investigatory agents.
[01:33:17]  You're not the prosecutors.
[01:33:18]  Lots of times there are disagreements between the agents investigating and the prosecutors.
[01:33:24]  They always want you to charge more than you ultimately do as a prosecutor.
[01:33:28]  You know, this is sort of like, get over it.
[01:33:30]  You know, you're not the guys in charge.
[01:33:32]  As I understand it, your point is this isn't that the prosecutors agreed with us.
[01:33:37]  We have the memos.
[01:33:37]  We have repeatedly, they wanted the same felonies we wanted.
[01:33:42]  Then something changed.
[01:33:43]  We got stiff-armed in the two jurisdictions.
[01:33:46]  We get pulled off the case.
[01:33:47]  And the next thing we know, it's a couple of misdemeanors.
[01:33:50]  And that's when you came forward.
[01:33:51]  That's what you came and said, this is absolute nonsense, you know, what they're doing.
[01:33:56]  So you're both still at the IRS.
[01:33:59]  That's awkward.
[01:34:01]  Joe, what's happened to you since you came forward?
[01:34:06]  Yeah, so I, a few days after we were removed from the team, the Hunter Biden investigation team, I drafted an email up to my commissioner of the IRS.
[01:34:19]  So it's through my leadership chain all the way up to the top.
[01:34:23]  And I wanted to put, I wanted to explain to him that no one ever took the time to talk to us in leadership about what happened in this case.
[01:34:34]  And it's essentially, I poured my heart out and provided the facts of what happened.
[01:34:41]  And I did not receive a response from the IRS commissioner.
[01:34:46]  Two days later, I received a response from my, the manager above Gary that responded with, you have been told multiple times to stay within your management chain, which was not true.
[01:34:59]  Never been told that.
[01:35:01]  And that I may have violated essentially the law by releasing 6E information, which was completely unfounded and untrue.
[01:35:11]  And to cease and desist from doing this further.
[01:35:13]  So once I got that email, it was a chilling effect to me.
[01:35:17]  I honestly couldn't believe that it was sent to me.
[01:35:21]  And it definitely changed my perspective on that they're not on my side.
[01:35:27]  At that time, they weren't on my side.
[01:35:29]  And it really, really, really bothered me.
[01:35:31]  And that's when I already had my attorney, Dean Zerbe.
[01:35:35]  And we got approach from the House Ways and Means to come forward.
[01:35:41]  And then that's where I've essentially come forward.
[01:35:45]  Gary, I know you've said you don't have a lot of money.
[01:35:49]  You don't have powerful connections.
[01:35:51]  You don't have the president of the United States looking out for you.
[01:35:57]  Are you worried about what's going to happen here?
[01:36:02]  You know, I did the right thing.
[01:36:05]  And I think that the majority of Americans are going to say, you know, he did the right thing.
[01:36:11]  And ultimately, when I look in the mirror at night, when I go home and kiss my kids and kiss my wife goodnight and go to sleep, I have to live with who I am.
[01:36:24]  And if they obviously can't attack us or they would have yesterday on our credibility or our beliefs.
[01:36:33]  So I think that I think we did the right thing.
[01:36:37]  I think I did the right thing.
[01:36:39]  And it's going to be painful.
[01:36:41]  It has been painful.
[01:36:43]  And look, I'm just a little guy who's sticking up for everybody like me.
[01:36:50]  And that makes me feel okay.
[01:36:53]  Joe, they say, Abby Lowell, Hunter's lawyer, you're disgruntled and have tried to smear you as having some sort of an agenda, though he doesn't get more specific than that.
[01:37:04]  What's that like?
[01:37:07]  Yeah, when you have a powerful attorney and a law firm and they're essentially saying that information against someone who's trying to do the right thing for the right reason, it's sad to me, and I don't know what's behind that.
[01:37:26]  But at the end of the day, I came forward.
[01:37:29]  I'm doing this for the right reason.
[01:37:31]  I'm doing this to prevent my colleagues, work colleagues, so that they don't have to go through this again.
[01:37:37]  If I need to go through some pain right now so that they don't have to go through this in the future, I'm actually okay with that.
[01:37:44]  And I think that that's the important message here.
[01:37:48]  They're not allowed to retaliate against you.
[01:37:50]  The law forbids it, but there's a question about whether they'll do it anyway, whether they'll do it quietly, whether your performance reviews will suddenly get a little bit worse and they'll find some reason to say that, Gary.

=== Equal Justice for All (03:52) ===

[01:38:02]  I mean, you need this job.
[01:38:04]  Nobody goes to work at the IRS to get rich.
[01:38:06]  So are you worried about that?
[01:38:10]  Look, I made protective disclosures, and there are laws that prohibit them from retaliating.
[01:38:17]  And we've presented this retaliation to the Office of Special Counsel and to our Inspector General.
[01:38:28]  And I'm confident that they're going to find that the agency unfortunately has chosen to follow DOJ's lead and to retaliate against me in multiple ways.
[01:38:39]  And there's the quiet retaliation, like specifically, not figuratively, right?
[01:38:49]  Like June 1st of 2023 was the last time anyone above me has spoken to me.
[01:38:58]  I have agents on undercover operations.
[01:39:00]  I have agents traveling in foreign countries to do interviews, really important, sensitive safety type issues.
[01:39:10]  And my leadership literally hasn't spoken to me in 50 days.
[01:39:16]  It's incredible.
[01:39:18]  Wow.
[01:39:19]  Wow.
[01:39:23]  The GOP is now asking for special counsel to be appointed to investigate these allegations of retaliation, which would clearly be criminal if they did it.
[01:39:33]  Next week, Hunter Biden goes into a federal court and is expected to plead guilty to these two misdemeanors in connection with this plea deal.
[01:39:41]  There's been pressure since you guys came forward for the judge not to approve this.
[01:39:45]  What do you want to see happen next week, Joe?
[01:39:49]  So again, I just presented the facts.
[01:39:53]  The judge in that situation has to, she's going to have all the facts in front of her, hopefully, and she's going to have to make a decision whether the facts meet what's in the plea agreement and the facts meet what's in being charged.
[01:40:09]  I can't speak for her.
[01:40:10]  I don't know what decision that she's going to make.
[01:40:13]  All I can do is I provided the information.
[01:40:16]  I provided the facts as I know them.
[01:40:19]  And last question, Gary.
[01:40:21]  What, if anything, can we do at this point to get to the bottom of what the real story is on Hunter Biden and on Joe Biden and the other Biden family members when it comes to these international dealings and incomes?
[01:40:35]  So, I mean, there's this huge burden on Congress, right?
[01:40:39]  Like Congress has to act appropriately.
[01:40:42]  They have to act bipartisan and they have to move forward with investigating the allegations and the evidence that we brought forward.
[01:40:49]  And, you know, We're just one little piece of this.
[01:40:54]  And I think it's really important that we came forward because it's just the equal application of justice cannot be understated.
[01:41:04]  And so as long as Congress, these IGEs continue to move forward, continue to follow the evidence, and they're not stifled by Department of Justice.
[01:41:15]  I think that's the path forward.
[01:41:18]  I admire your courage, your honesty, your commitment to the rest of us, to civics, and just to fundamental fairness, guys.
[01:41:25]  Thank you.
[01:41:26]  Thank you so much for speaking out and for coming on here together for your honor.
[01:41:32]  Thank you so much.
[01:41:33]  Thank you so much.
[01:41:33]  Have a great day.
[01:41:35]  You too.
[01:41:36]  We're going to stay on this story.
[01:41:37]  You can count on that.
[01:41:38]  And programming note tomorrow should tell you for the very first time here on the Megan Kelly Show, Donald Trump Jr.
[01:41:45]  See you then.
[01:41:50]  Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
[01:41:53]  No BS, no agenda, and no