OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Friday he was appointing a special counsel to investigate first son Hunter Biden.
Garland appointed U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, the federal prosecutor who had been at the forefront of the Hunter Biden probes for years.
Weiss is at the center of criticism over his recommendation of probation with no jail time for Hunter in a sweetheart plea deal that fell apart last month under questioning from U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika over a blanket immunity provision from any future prosecution the agreement contained.
Her questions came after prosecutors denied the agreement contained any immunity from future prosecution clauses such as violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
After federal prosecutors said that told the judge that future charges related to alleged actions taken by Hunter Biden in violation of FARA statutes could be coming, his attorneys became unnerved.
“Rip it up!” Biden’s attorney Christopher Clark said in reference to the plea deal, according to ABC News.
“As far as I’m concerned, the plea agreement is null and void,” he added, to audible gasps in the courtroom, according to reports. Hunter Biden then pleaded not guilty to the tax charges.
Also last month, an IRS whistleblower testifying before a House committee gave some remarkable insight into previous evidence suggesting that President Joe Biden benefitted from his son Hunter’s business deals, despite claiming he knew “nothing” about them.
During a media interview, Joseph Ziegler, an IRS special agent, noted that several roadblocks were put up when he was investigating Hunter Biden for alleged tax violations.
CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge asked Ziegler, “Did you uncover evidence that President Biden financially benefited from his son’s deals?”
“I don’t feel comfortable answering that question,” Ziegler said. “Any time we potentially wanted to go down the road of asking questions related to the president, it was, ‘That’s gonna take too much approvals, we can’t ask those questions.’ And I mean, it created an environment that was very hard to deal with.”
When he tried to press forward, he said the response he mostly got was: “Let’s put that on the back burner.”
“Wouldn’t a politically sensitive case require additional approvals?” asked Herridge.
“Yes, I do understand that aspect,” Ziegler said. “But it would be like, ‘Well let’s think about it and put that on the back burner.’”
EXCLUSIVE: Hunter Biden IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler tells @CBS_Herridge anytime IRS investigators potentially wanted to ask questions related to President Biden, they were told "That's gonna take too much approvals. We can't ask those questions."pic.twitter.com/aitPxKpyUb
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) July 19, 2023
At the end of the day, he said, the real issue is, “Are we treating everyone the same? Are we treating all taxpayers the same?”
“And in this case, no, I don’t think so,” he told Herridge.
At one point, he said he had wanted to interview Hunter Biden’s adult children because “a lot of the business deductions, expenses, [were] related to the adult children.”
Asked if he was ever able to obtain permission to talk to them, Ziegler said. “We never received the approvals to talk to those people” because he was informed by the assistant U.S. attorney that doing so would get them “into hot water.”
“Is that in the IRS handbook, avoiding hot water?” Herridge asked.
“No, but I mean, I was asking to do these certain things and roadblock after roadblock was put up in front of me,” he said.
CBS News noted further that Ziegler is “a 13-year veteran of the IRS” and “the second IRS employee to come forward to claim the federal tax investigation into the president’s son supported criminal charges more serious than the misdemeanor tax charges he is scheduled to plead guilty to next week as part of a plea bargain.”
Herridge asked Ziegler if he was recommending that the Justice Department take a pause on pressing for the plea bargain.
“This is up to the U.S. Attorney who brought the charges, David Weiss [in Delaware]. And it is up to the judge to make that decision,” he responded
He added in his interview: “When you’re prevented from going down certain roads, I guess I don’t know what could have been found if we were not hamstrung or not handcuffed.”
