A collection of documents provided to Congress on Monday showed the presence of a second IRS whistleblower in the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden, according to a story from the Washington Examiner. Just over a week has passed since the IRS terminated the entire investigation team that had been looking into the president’s troublesome son. Now, there is a second whistleblower.
The new whistleblower is a special agent in the IRS’s international tax and financial crimes branch and has worked for the organization for 13 years. Prior to his abrupt termination last week, he had been working on the Hunter Biden investigation since it was launched in 2018.
The new whistleblower said in an email sent to seven top IRS officials on Thursday, including Commissioner Daniel Werfel, that he was fired for acting in the “right way.”
“As I’m sure you were aware, I was removed this week from a highly sensitive case … after nearly 5 years of work. I was not afforded the opportunity of a phone call directly from my [Special Agent in Charge] or [Assistant Special Agent in Charge], even though this had been my investigation since the start,” the latest whistleblower wrote.
“I … have spent thousands of hours on the case, worked to complete 95% of the investigation, have sacrificed sleep/vacations/gray hairs etc., my husband and I (identifying me as the case agent) were publicly outed and ridiculed on social media due to our sexual orientation, and to ultimately be removed for always trying to do the right thing, is unacceptable in my opinion,” he continued.
The IRS commissioner, whose spokesperson stated last week that he will not retaliate against legally protected internal disclosures, did not respond to the second whistleblower’s email. The agent was admonished by a senior official from the agency’s D.C. field office and informed that they might have broken the law.
“You have been told several times that you need to follow your chain of command. IRS-CI maintains a chain of command for numerous reasons to include trying to stop unauthorized disclosures,” wrote IRS associate special officer Lola Watson. “Your email yesterday may have included potential grand jury (aka 6e material) in the subject line and contents of the email, and you included recipients that are not on the 6e list.”
Scoop: Lawyers for the IRS whistleblower who says political bias has “infected” the Hunter Biden investigation tell @DCExaminer their client wants Grassley involved in investigating the disclosures, but Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden is blocking Grassley…https://t.co/B96L9SS8zh
— Jerry Dunleavy 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) May 22, 2023
A little more than a month ago, an IRS supervisor accused the Justice Department of “acting inappropriately” in their treatment of the case. Now the agent is making similar accusations. The supervisor, who has been in charge of the case since January 2020, also charged “preferential treatment” for Biden and fabrications in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appearance before Congress.
On Friday, that informant is anticipated to give a closed-door testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee.
According to reports, the internal handling of the matter has alarmed both IRS informants. In recent disclosures to Congress, they have also detailed substantial allegations of retaliation, according to the recent York Post.
Attorneys for the first whistleblower raised concern over “reprisals” that are “unacceptable and against the law” in a letter to Werfel on Monday.
The initial whistleblower’s lawyers Mark Lytle & Tristian Leavitt said that the agent in question “had a right to expect that his email would be taken seriously, considered, and addressed professionally without retribution, as the law requires.”
Instead, according to Lytle and Leavitt, “Instead, the IRS responded with accusations of criminal conduct and warnings to other agents in an apparent attempt to intimidate into silence anyone who might raise similar concerns,”
Although Congressional sources have corroborated it, neither IRS whistleblower has publicly stated that Hunter Biden is the subject of the probe they have mentioned.
Recent congressional testimony shows that the infamous 2020 letter alleging that the Hunter Biden laptop allegation was a Russian disinformation plot was both signed and ultimately approved by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States.
Multiple former U.S. intelligence officials testified under oath about the CIA’s involvement in the dissemination of the letter, which was ultimately signed by over fifty former top U.S. intelligence officials, according to a report that will be published by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government this coming Wednesday.
“One signer of the statement, former CIA analyst David Cariens, disclosed to the Committees that a CIA employee affiliated with the agency’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (‘PCRB’) informed him of the existence of the statement and asked him if he would sign it,” the House report states.
“The Committees have requested additional material from the CIA, which has ignored the request to date.”
The mission of the Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) is to examine comments, letters, and books written by former intelligence employees in order to assess whether any classified information is included that has to be deleted or redacted before publication.
In an email sent to congressional investigators on March 5, 2023, Cariens said that a CIA agent in charge of evaluating and authorizing a memoir he wanted to publish informed him of the Hunter Biden laptop letter and even asked him if he would like to sign it.
“I was told about the draft letter,” Cariens said, “when the person in charge of reviewing the book called to say it was approved with no changes. The person asked me if I would be willing to sign.”
