Earlier this year, two IRS whistleblowers came forward to voice concerns about the Biden administration’s handling of a federal investigation into First Son Hunter Biden’s tax crimes. They met privately with the House Ways and Means Committee in late May, and the panel, led by Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO), voted to release the nearly 400 pages of testimony last month.
In his testimony, Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley revealed information about when the FBI confirmed that the laptop left in a computer repair shop did, in fact, belong to Hunter (hint: it was much sooner than previously believed).
On Thursday’s show, Shapley and fellow whistleblower, IRS Criminal Investigator Joseph Ziegler, joined Megyn to discuss the role Hunter’s laptop played in the IRS investigation.
The Timeline
The IRS investigation into Hunter’s taxes began in November 2018. Ziegler was assigned as the investigator in the case, and Shapley was his supervisor. They were about a year into the probe when the FBI learned that a laptop that purportedly belonged to Hunter was left at a computer repair shop in Delaware.
According to Shapley’s testimony, the FBI authenticated the abandoned laptop in the fall of 2019 and assessed that “it was not manipulated in any way.” “In October 2019, the FBI became aware that a repair shop had a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden and that the laptop might contain evidence of a crime,” he said. “The FBI verified its authenticity in November of 2019 by matching the device number against Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud ID.”
As you may recall, The New York Post was the first news outlet to report on the existence of the laptop in October 2020 – just weeks before the presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. At the time, it was dismissed by the Biden campaign and intelligence experts as ‘Russian disinformation,’ and the story was actively suppressed on social media. Mainstream media outlets like The New York Times and Washington Post did not admit to the legitimacy of the laptop until March 2022. As it turns out, the authenticity of the device was never in doubt.
Megyn said that revelation is damning. “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,’” she said. “And they knew that wasn’t true – they absolutely understood that the laptop was Hunter’s and yet still ran around telling the social media companies that.”
The Laptop’s Role in the IRS Investigation
In his testimony, Shapley explained that “when the FBI took possession of the device in December 2019, they notified the IRS that it likely contained evidence of tax crimes.” He told Megyn that the contents were retrieved and made available by virtue of an IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) search warrant. “It was the tax information that got the information from the laptop,” he said.
Even so, Shapley and Ziegler do not believe they received the data they needed from the laptop. They explained that a “filter review” was conducted as is protocol, but they never got the full breadth of the information that existed. “The laptop had to go through… what’s called a ‘filter review’ first and then, from the filter review team, it would be filtered down to us,” Ziegler explained. “But the problem was… there were additional things that would have been found outside of the filter that weren’t being shared with us.”
He said that it was admitted that content was being withheld, but not what that content was. “You need to tell us what you’re holding back from us, not that you held back information from us,” Ziegler emphasized. “So, there’s that final step that wasn’t provided to us and that, I think, is a problem.”
Shapley said that this apparent interference was in line with the roadblocks they faced throughout the probe. “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 [something] and we’re not allowed to follow certain investigative leads,” he concluded. “It is entirely possible that there’s information on there that… they kept from the investigators.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Shapley and Ziegler by tuning in to episode 591 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.