Transcript
A (0:00)
Foreign. Hi, everybody, it's Cheryl Akison. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure. After Hours today, the whistleblowers versus the Big Guy. There's an important follow up to the IRS whistleblowers who exposed political interference in the Hunter Biden tax probe. Sunday, March 22, on full measure. I'll be speaking with one of the key figures, Joseph Ziegler, the IRS criminal investigator, who, believe me, had no idea what he was getting into in 2018 when he first uncovered potential tax fraud tied to the Bidens. The saga that followed involves allegations of serious coverups. And once facing retaliation for his disclosure, along with his supervisor, Gary Shapley. Well, the update has to do with some good news. They've managed to turn the tables in a big way. Vindicated now with legal settlements and even promotions. As you'll hear, this is extremely rare for whistleblowers. They almost always get the short end of the stick. Here's my interview and an update with Joseph Ziegler.
B (1:21)
So I was the primary case agent who initiated the case against Hunter Biden. Just normal. Part of doing my job was reviewing bank reports relating to a foreign social media company. And in those bank reports, it mentioned some Russian prostitutes who were involved with Hunter Biden, and they related to the social media company. So started looking into it. There was some prior filings from Hunter's divorce with his ex wife to where she mentioned that Hunter had tax issues. She mentioned a diamond. So there were a lot of things that were in there that in the public record that said, okay, there's, there may be something here. So had no idea who Hunter was at the time, just knew the Biden name. That was it. Started digging into it. He had some unfiled tax returns, was making a significant amount of money. I'm like, there's potentially a case here. So elevated it up, took some time, and ultimately the case was assigned to the Delaware U.S. attorney's office. Started working the case there, primary case agent, tax case, did a bunch of electronic search warrants. But what I had seen that we were running up against issues, they were all always slowing us down. Didn't want us to follow the normal investigative procedures. But this was in the kind of the, the COVID setting. So fast forward a little bit more. We go overt, we actually come up, or we don't come up, but we find evidence that is indicative of some tax crimes. So I write a prosecution report related to Hunter Biden. We bring that forward through the process. So the U.S. attorney in Delaware was David Weiss at the time. And because Venue for the tax charges wasn't in Delaware. It was actually in D.C. and California. We actually had to go to two Biden appointed US attorneys to bring those charges. So when the case started coming to ultimately charging the case, we were seeing a lot of improper conduct on the behalf of Department of Justice irs. We were. We were just had our. Like, we didn't know what to do. So my boss, Gary Shapley, who is also another whistleblower with me, had a meeting with David Weiss to basically where David Weiss said he was not the deciding official in charge in the case. That was Gary's red line meeting. He said that he can't do this anymore, so he decided to become a whistleblower. I stayed as the case agent, and I didn't ultimately make the decision to become a whistleblower until they removed me from the investigation, which we have later found out was specifically retaliation against us for making protected disclosures about their misconduct. And so they removed us. I became a whistleblower, testified in front of Congress, Department of Justice, decided to do a sweetheart plea deal related to Hunter Biden. That plea deal fell through. David Weiss becomes special counsel. David Weiss charges him in Delaware with the gun charge, charges him in California with the tax crimes. Everything that I had put forward that he should have been charged with. And ultimately he was convicted on the gun charge in Delaware, and he pled guilty to the tax crimes in. In California. And then ultimately his father pardoned him. And it's kind of where we're at today. It's kind of that. I can't believe I just did that in two minutes, but that was. Yeah,
