Whistleblower expert warns attacks on Biden case IRS agents may chill others from coming forward

The head of a major whistleblower group is warning that political attacks on two IRS agents who unmasked alleged misconduct in the Hunter Biden probe may scare other government workers with knowledge of wrongdoing from coming forward.

"Other potential whistleblowers are going to be intimidated....are going to be chilled from coming forward if they see that there's not a willing audience to hear out the allegations and that they're going to be jumped on," said Tristan Leavitt, president of the Empower Oversight whistleblower center.

The fear is "they're going to be pre-judged before the information or facts even come out,” he said during an interview Friday night on the Just the News, No Noise television show.

Leavitt’s group represents IRS agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who emerged this summer to blow the whistle on alleged political interference in the Hunter Biden probe.

Democrats initially assailed both agents’ credibility, but recent testimony and evidence has backed up their claims.

Leavitt said the critics of the IRS whistleblowers keep moving the goalposts as more evidence comes out about government corruption. 

"Those that have been critics of the IRS whistleblowers keep shifting their ground....they keep moving the goalposts," he said. 

Last month, an interview transcript reviewed by Just the News revealed that an FBI supervisor corroborated key aspects of two IRS whistleblowers’ testimony alleging that federal prosecutors slow-walked Hunter Biden’s criminal probe and declined last year to bring tax charges in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

The female FBI supervisor, whose name the Justice Department asked be kept private in the transcript, was interviewed by the House Judiciary Committee, and she chronicled her interactions with Shapley and Ziegler and Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, the lead prosecutor in the Hunter Biden probe.

She confirmed that agents were concerned that the DOJ tried to use the 2022 midterm elections to delay action in the Hunter Biden case even though his father was not up for election last year.

"Before it was 'how would you know anything about California, about the DC declinations? This is all bunk, right?'" Leavitt said in reference to the criticisms of the whistleblowers who came forward with the information. "Once that information comes out and it's clear that these U.S. attorneys did decline a partner, it's 'well, but they didn't stop U.S. Attorney Weiss from coming.'"

According to Leavitt, more whistleblowers will want to come forward only if they know that people want to hear their stories and the evidence they bring forward. 

"I think that's an important thing for future whistleblowers to know that people are keeping track of people paying attention, because that's what will encourage them more than anything else," he said.