A former head of the Justice Department’s Tax Division described her shock Wednesday after reading testimony from an Internal Revenue Service whistleblower, saying there was “malfeasance” in the probe of Hunter Biden.
Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee released transcripts of depositions from Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers who said Attorney General Merrick Garland and IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel lied to Congress about the Hunter Biden probe Thursday. According to the whistleblowers, U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2017, allegedly told investigators that he was “not the deciding person” as to whether or not Hunter Biden would be charged.
“I wanted the public to understand what happened in this case,” Eileen J. O’Connor, who headed the Tax Division of the Justice Department from 2001 to 2007, told Fox News host Jesse Watters. “Informed citizens are essential to the operation of this government. From my decades as a tax practitioner and my six years as head of the tax division, I read Special Agent Shapley’s testimony with deep, deep interest. When I got to page 95, my jaw dropped.”
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“As early as June 2021, the prosecution team understood that because crimes must be prosecuted in the district where they occur, Attorney General Garland’s failure to make U.S. Attorney Weiss a special counsel guaranteed Hunter Biden would not be prosecuted for his tax crimes,” O’Connor, who wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal calling for the judge hearing the case to throw out the plea deal, said.
The Justice Department announced June 20 that Biden would plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges, while a felony charge of lying on the form filled out when purchasing a firearm would be addressed via a pre-trial diversion program following an investigation by United States Attorney David Weiss.
“I want to throw a bouquet to Special Agent Shapley for bringing this forward,” O’Connor said. “It is so important malfeasance in the administration of justice be brought forward and Congress be able to perform its oversight function, do something about it. What is so disturbing here is – well, let me mention I want to thank ‘The Wall Street Journal’ for publishing my op-ed and giving it a catchy title. My title had been ‘Corruption, Collusion, or Mere Incompetence?,’ because any of those might actually describe what caused what happen here to happen here.”
“Attorney General Garland testified under oath to Congress in March that he had given U.S. Attorney Weiss all the authority he needed to do, whatever he needed to do, wherever he needed to do it,” O’Connor said. “But you might recall that When Rod Rosenstein named Robert Mueller special counsel, we were able to see the contemporaneous documentation of that authority and of what that enabled Robert Mueller to do. There has been no documentation at all of Attorney General Garland’s assertion that he gave Weiss authority and we can see from what happened that apparently he didn’t have it.”
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