The Justice Department, FBI, and IRS all knew the infamous Hunter Biden laptop "was real" immediately after it came to light and prosecutors told investigators not to ask questions about Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election, according to two whistleblowers.
IRS employees Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, both who previously testified before Congress, spoke to investigative reporter Catherine Herridge in their first interview since Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to federal tax charges to avoid facing another criminal trial months after the being convicted in a separate gun case.
The infamous "laptop from hell" was originally abandoned by first son Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop before being retrieved and authenticated by the FBI.
In October 2020, the New York Post first reported the abandoned laptop included of influence-peddling, drug use, and other lurid activity.
Government officials, social media companies, and the mainstream media refused to acknowledge the authenticity of the laptop, instead saying it was part of a Russian disinformation effort.
In July 2023, the FBI's section chief of the Foreign Influence Task Force testified before a House panel that the bureau knew the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden in the run-up to the 2020 election.
Shapley and Ziegler told Herridge federal investigators faced "a lot of overt investigative steps that we were not allowed to take because we had an upcoming election."
They also told the reporter:
- "The prosecutors … told us that they didn't want to ask about 'The Big Guy.'"
- "We corroborated that 'The Big Guy' was Joe Biden. Yes."
- "There was no question ever that 'The Big Guy' was referring to Joe Biden."
- "It was for the purpose of affecting that [2020] election."
The two whistleblowers alleged there is disparate treatment of taxpayers by the IRS and a double standard at the Justice Department for the handling of presidential campaigns.
Herridge also reported that an internal IRS email shows the whistleblowers' supervisor celebrated the Hunter Biden guilty plea, calling it a "great conviction" even though the whistleblower say they have been punished for coming forward by superiors.
"Those are words that are not supported by the actions of the agency," Herridge was told.
"This to me was someone who knows that [an] IRS watchdog right now is looking into the way that they've handled this and they see the writing on the wall, and this really is an example of just covering their backside like a true bureaucracy."