In whistleblowers, Democrats see GOP hypocrisy on IRS

​House Democrats are blasting Republicans this week with charges of hypocrisy for lionizing a pair of IRS whistleblowers while fighting to defund the agency at large over allegations of corruption and bias against conservatives. 

The Democrats say Republicans have undermined the legitimacy of their own star witnesses through months of attacks on the agency they represent, diminishing the public’s trust in the IRS and the agents who make it run.

“It’s a very cherry-picked situation,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “It is hypocritical to call on these folk while also stripping the resources they need to do their job.” 

Republicans have rejected those criticisms out of hand, arguing that their distrust in the IRS — as well as efforts to slash the agency’s funding — is entirely compatible with their faith in individual agents to expose the types of mismanagement driving their suspicions. 

“Don’t you have two guys that are doing the right thing, and they’re telling us that there are a lot of people within their agency not doing the right thing?” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.). “That’s perfectly consistent. If you’ve got honest agents you can rely on, they’re going to tell us about the dishonest folks.” 

The animated back-and-forth is just the latest clash between the parties over the size, scope and culture of the nation’s federal tax-collection agency. The IRS has become a lightning rod of partisan controversy over the last decade amid Republican charges that it targets them disproportionately. 

The two whistleblowers — both veteran agency officials — appeared before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday and delivered significant allegations surrounding a years-long tax investigation into Hunter Biden, the president’s son. 

Gary Shapley, a special agent in the IRS’s criminal division, and Joseph Ziegler, who led the agency’s probe into Hunter Biden, both testified that they’d uncovered a long list of infractions committed by the younger Biden but hit a wall of resistance in the Justice Department (DOJ) when they sought to pursue criminal charges against him. 

Last month, the president’s son reached a deal with the DOJ, pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax offenses — lesser charges than the IRS investigators felt were warranted. 

“As the special agent on this case, I thought the felony charges were well-supported,” Ziegler said. 

Republicans wasted no time leaning on the testimony as evidence of a broader executive conspiracy — spanning agencies and administrations — to protect the president’s family from an embarrassing legal saga.

“Here we have the Biden Inc. family being treated different than the entire country,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters Wednesday, citing the testimony of the IRS agents.

Yet, for the better part of the year, Republicans have put the IRS near the top of their list of “deep state” agencies they want to defund, charging the federal tax-collection agency with rampant incompetence, mismanagement and political favoritism toward Democrats. 

The attacks have led to a deep distrust in the agency among Republicans — and it’s sparked questions from Democrats this week why GOP leaders suddenly have confidence in the integrity of the two agents who testified.

“I started by saying that we will be treated to the spectacle of the Republicans, for the first time, celebrating these IRS agents from the deep state against a gun-toting taxpayer,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), senior Democrat on the Oversight panel. 

“Their general policy is not to have meaningful tax enforcement in the country — unless it’s somehow to the political advantage of the GOP.”

The issue has been front and center since the very start of the year. 

The first bill House Republicans passed in the majority this Congress was legislation to rescind the bulk of an IRS funding boost — roughly $80 billion — championed by President Biden and the Democrats last year, following through on a key campaign promise. The money is largely aimed at eliminating IRS backlogs, streamlining the agency’s technology and increasing high-income enforcement.

Republicans had argued, however, that the funding would go toward the hiring of more than 80,000 new enforcement agents who would target middle-class taxpayers — a group much unlike Shapley and Ziegler, GOP lawmakers said. 

“It wasn’t going to hire guys like this; it was going to hire 80,000 agents, or whatever it was, to go after American people,” Biggs said.

Raskin cited the Republicans’ IRS cuts in his opening remarks Wednesday, juxtaposing Republican attacks on the agency with the conference’s efforts to reduce its funding.

“This money will enable the IRS to make long overdue improvements in customer service but will also enable the agency to restore lost capabilities in enforcement to identify and prosecute tax cheats,” he said, referring to the funding boost. 

“But the very first thing House Republicans did this Congress was vote to rescind that funding while disparaging these future IRS employees who will do the same kind of work today’s witnesses do,” Raskin continued.

Republicans, however, are brushing aside that split screen, arguing the two circumstances are mutually exclusive.

“I don’t think they’re competing at all,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said Thursday.

“I don’t think that those individuals that gave testimony are indicative of, like, you know, every person who works at the IRS,” he later added. “And I don’t think there’s any tension between saying we don’t want to hire 87,000 new IRS agents, but we have IRS agents, and if any of those people have seen malign conduct on the part of the government, we want to hear from them.”

Gaetz noted that the GOP has consistently railed against the DOJ, particularly the FBI, as being politicized against conservatives, but a congressional panel nonetheless heard testimony from FBI agents in May — a set of circumstances similar to those surrounding this week’s IRS hearing.

“We’re also very critical of the excesses of the surveillance state at the FBI, and yet we still championed the testimony of the FBI whistleblowers,” Gaetz said.

Ocasio-Cortez agreed that the whistleblowers deserve the public’s praise but also accused Republicans of using them as political pawns to attack political adversaries. 

“They are stripping these exact investigators of the resources they need to do these exact investigations, but meanwhile, on the other hand, when they find one case that they think that they can use and bring public, they’re going to do that,” she said. “I do think it’s inconsistent, but it kind of falls in line with their general political tactics.”