IRS whistleblower: Hunter Biden hasn’t paid taxes on 2014 money from Ukrainian oligarch’s firm

Federal agents secured evidence that Hunter Biden engaged in a “pretty classic tax evasion scheme” that allowed him to avoid paying taxes on millions of dollars in income since at least 2014, and the deal he ultimately got would not have been afforded to other Americans facing such serious charges, an IRS whistleblower who supervised the investigation tells Just the News.

“If these facts were from the local businessman or the neighbor next door, they would have been charged, they would have already probably had their entire sentence,” IRS Supervisor Agent Gary Shapley said during a 45-minute interview aired Thursday on the John Solomon Reports podcast.

Shapley, and a second IRS whistleblower whose name has not been released, rocked Washington earlier this month when they told the House Ways and Means Committee that Justice Department engaged in significant political interference in Hunter Biden’s tax cases that thwarted agents from getting search warrants, interviewing witnesses and ultimately bringing the serious felony charges that career prosecutors believed were warranted against President Joe Biden’s son.

Shapley, a 14-year veteran of the IRS, reiterated to Just the News what he told lawmakers, and strongly disputed some liberal attacks that he is a disgruntled agent. He said the cases he has worked on just the last few years will have recovered nearly $5 billion by year’s end in taxpayer money from all over the globe.

“I'm pro-IRS. I'm pro mission. I'm pro agency,” he said. “I've been a senior leader at this agency, I have a lot of great friends in senior leadership. And I believe in what we're doing. But I believe in what we're doing, when we're treating people fairly. And, you know, it just didn't happen in this particular case.”

Shapley and his lawyers Tristan Leavitt and Jason Foster of the Empower Oversight whistleblower center and Mark Lytle told Just the News that IRS and FBI agents ultimately uncovered evidence that Hunter Biden failed to declare more than $8 million in income on his federal returns between the 2014 and 2019 tax years after receiving a tip about an amateur pornography site. By failing to declare income or file tax returns, the first son avoided paying $2.2 million in taxes during that time, they added.

Shapley said the team of IRS agents he supervised found evidence that the evasion included that Hunter Biden did not declare about $400,000 in income from the controversial Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings in 2014 led by the oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky.

“If you're specifically talking about Burisma, for 2014, there was conservatively $400,000 in unreported Burisma income on his income tax returns. And, you know, that was around $120,000 to $125,000 in tax withholdings as a result of that failure to report that income,” he explained.

Shapley said career agents and prosecutors signed off on a plan to charge Hunter Biden with multiple felonies to include the Burisma monies from 2014, but when Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, the lead prosecutor, asked his colleagues in Los Angeles and Washington D.C. to secure an indictment he was turned down. And then the statute of limitations was allowed to expire for the earlier offenses.

“It was obviously the injection of political influence,” Shapley said of the decision by two U.S. Attorneys appointed by President Joe Biden to decline the charges. And the consequence, he said, is that Hunter Biden still hasn’t – and won’t have to ever – pay the overdue taxes on the Ukrainian business deal.

“And so that's still outstanding, and because, you know, 2014-15, was denied by the DC US attorney. And then David Weiss requested Special Counsel authority and didn't get it,” he explained. “And then they allow that statute of limitations to expire, even though defense counsel had signed extensions on that previously. There is no legal remedy to go and get that money unless he does so voluntarily.”

Christopher Clark, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, did not return calls or emails Thursday seeking comment on the whistleblower allegations. Hunter Biden’s team has said he has repaid between $2 million and $3 million in unpaid taxes and penalties without specifying what years were covered. They also announced last week he has agreed to plead guilty next month to two misdemeanor tax evasion charges covering the years 2017-18 in a deal with Weiss that is expected to spare the presidential son time in prison.

"I spent many years interfacing with the prosecutors who brought this investigation. I think they really tried to be fair, I think that they tried to be thorough, tried to look into everything possible. And I really think they tried to be fair," Clark said after the deal was announced.

Clark has said he believed the deal resolves all pending criminal matters against his client though Weiss, the prosecutor, filed a statement in court claiming his probe is still ongoing. Hunter Biden is slated to appear in U.S. District Court in Delaware in late July.

Shapley said the scheme his team uncovered was similar to those used by many other suspects to avoid paying taxes by disguising income as loans from what is known as a nominee company. It was easy to detect because Hunter Biden’s records treating the Burisma money as loans did not match the original documents reporting it as income from his business partner Devon Archer and their firm Rosemont Seneca Bohai, he said.

“It's a pretty classic tax evasion scheme, and it was for the purpose of not paying taxes on this income,” Shapley said.

“You know, even the parties didn't treat the money the same because Hunter Biden is telling his people that they are loans to him and Devon Archer and Rosemont Seneca Bohai are booking those as expenses on their books,” he said.

Shapley said he was motivated to blow the whistle only after witnessing extensive political interference in the case and then seeing Attorney General Merrick Garland claim that there was no interference in the case and that Weiss was allowed to bring any charges he wanted in any jurisdiction. Shapley said he had first hand conversations in which Weiss told agents that “he’s not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.”

“We have an Attorney General Garland, when he's ever questioned about this case on why he doesn't need a special prosecutor on this case, he's saying because, you know, David Weiss is in charge,” Shapley said. “And it just isn't the way the facts worked. It isn't the way this case went.”

Shapley also confirmed he was surprised when Congress announced recently that the FBI possesses an FD-1023 form containing allegations from a trusted informant dating to 2017 that some of the money from Burisma may have involved a bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden. He said neither he nor his team was ever told by the FBI or Weiss about the existence of those allegations even though they were directly related to the IRS part of the probe.

“We work very closely with the FBI agents on this case, including their national security agent. And I'm very confident that no one on the team working ever saw that document, and were able to take any steps to investigate the veracity of that document,” he said.

Shapley's emergence as a whistleblower has transformed the years-long controversy involving the Biden family’s foreign business dealings, prompting unprecedented media coverage in recent days while compelling Congress to escalate its investigations.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Just the News on Thursday evening that three House committees will work together to investigate whistleblower claims that the Justice Department took extraordinary steps to interfere in the Hunter Biden criminal tax investigation.

Jordan said the Judiciary Committee he chairs will work along side the Oversight Committee led by Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., and the House Ways and Means Committee led by Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., to demand transcribed interviews from three U.S. Attorneys, DOJ tax division lawyers and FBI and IRS agents who worked the Hunter Biden case. The three sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding access to the witnesses.

"I think the Attorney General, and (Delaware U.S. Attorney) David Weiss and some of these other people that we've now asked to talk to, we're looking forward to getting the chance to interview those and see what they have to say," Jordan said during an appearance on the "Just the News, No Noise" television show.

Jordan said lawmakers found Shapley, a decorated 14-year veteran of major IRS cases, to be credible and his contemporaneous evidence that he gave Congress raises serious questions about the veracity of Garland's earlier testimony that Delaware prosecutor Weiss did not face interference and could bring the charges he wanted against Hunter Biden.

"Somebody's not telling the truth. And it sure doesn't look like it's the whistleblower," Jordan told Just the News. "I think he's with the IRS like 14 years. He is credible, I think, in so many ways. He handled some of the biggest international tax fraud cases at the agency. So the things he's told us just do not correspond with what Merrick Garland said.

"Mr. Shapley was recording these after meetings, contemporaneously putting this down and memorializing this, putting this into memos, sending these emails to some of his other agents on the case. So I think he seems very, very credible, and a strong whistleblower, a strong witness," the chairman added.

Jordan said lawmakers have particular interest in a federal prosecutor named Lesley Wolf, who was identified by Shapley and a second IRS whistleblower as having told agents all the way in 2020 they couldn't take certain steps to investigate Hunter Biden or Joe Biden. 

"She's the one who said, you know, cancel the search warrant that they were wanting to do," Jordan said. "She's the one who said you can't ask when you're interviewing people. You can't ask about President Biden, you can't use the term the 'Big Guy.'"