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House Republicans are demanding answers from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) regarding whether it retaliated against several IRS whistleblowers.

On Friday, House Oversight Committee chair James Comer, Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan, and Ways & Means Committee chair Jason Smith penned a letter to OSC acting principal deputy special counsel Karen Gorman.

The letter was sent three days after IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler sat down with a journalist to “discuss their disclosures to Congress and how their lives have been affected by making those disclosures,” according to the aforementioned letter.

“[The IRS] has a smothering blanket on me,” Shapley said during the interview, according to Fox News. “[They’re] hoping that I quit, that they find some way to terminate me. Or they probably hope that I commit suicide or something.”

Here’s where things get nasty. Less than an hour after the journalist publicly released the interview, Shapley received a memo from the IRS letting him know that he “could no longer keep his position,” according to the GOP lawmakers’ letter.

“This reassignment appears to give SSA Shapley effectively two options: accept a demotion or resign,” the lawmakers continued. “The IRS is giving SSA Shapley 15 days to decide. This is egregious, and OSC must take immediate steps to pause this action while it examines the IRS’s decision.”

Comer, Jordan, and Smith are now demanding a “prompt” update on the OSC’s ongoing investigation into the whistleblowers’ original allegations about the IRS’ handling of the Hunter Biden case.

The trio of lawmakers are also demanding that the OSC “use its lawful authority to seek an immediate stay at the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board pausing the IRS’s latest threatening action.”

“SSA Shapley’s and SA Ziegler’s whistleblowing took courage and bravery,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter. “Because of their important disclosures, Americans learned how the IRS treats individuals differently based upon their last names.”

“[Shapley and Ziegler] made lawfully protected disclosures to Congress that resulted in unrelenting personal and professional attacks on them. But they have not wavered. As this case has rightfully garnered significant public attention, OSC must show the whistleblower community that OSC will take appropriate and immediate action to stand up for whistleblowers,” they added.

Shapley was the first of the two to go public back in June of 2023, when he testified before Congress that special counsel David Weiss — the guy who’d greenlighted Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal — had had his hands tied by higher-ups within the Biden-Harris Department of Justice.

“In an October 7, 2022, meeting at the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office, U.S. Attorney David Weiss told six witnesses he did not have authority to charge in other districts and had thus requested special counsel status,” a summary of his testimony reads.

“Those six witnesses include Baltimore FBI Special Agent in Charge Tom Sobocinski and Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ryeshia Holley, IRS Assistant Special Agent in Charge Gary Shapley and Special Agent in Charge Darrell Waldon, who also independently and contemporaneously corroborated Mr. Shapley’s account in an email, now public as Exhibit 10,” the summary continues.

“Mr. Shapley would have no insight into why Mr. Weiss’s would make these statements at the October 7, 2022 meeting if they were false. That Mr. Weiss made these statements is easily corroborated, and it is up to him and the Justice Department to reconcile the evidence of his October 7, 2022 statements with contrary statements by Mr. Weiss and the Attorney General to Congress,” the summary concludes.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has for his part already called bull, claiming during a press conference that there’s no legitimacy to these allegations.

“As I said at the outset, Mr. Weiss, who was appointed by President Trump as the U.S. Attorney in Delaware and who was assigned this matter in the previous administration, would be permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to, and in any district in which he wanted to,” he said.

“I don’t know how it would be possible for anybody to block him from bringing a prosecution given that he ever has this authority,” he added.

Vivek Saxena
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