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Emails Show Ron Wyden’s Office Lied About IRS Whistleblower ‘Backing Out’ Of Senate Meeting


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MAY 25, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/25/emails-show-ron-wydens-office-lied-about-irs-whistleblower-backing-out-of-senate-meeting/

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A spokesman for Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., falsely claimed the Hunter Biden IRS whistleblower had “backed out” of an agreement to meet with the Senate Finance Committee next week, the whistleblower’s attorneys told The Federalist.

“It’s disappointing Senator Wyden’s staff is playing partisan games by releasing inaccurate information,” said the legal team representing the whistleblower, who was identified as Gary Shapley during a CBS interview Wednesday. “As emails show, our client didn’t ‘back out’ of anything because there was never anything to back out of.” 

On Wednesday, CNN reported the Senate Finance Committee’s claims, quoting Wyden’s spokesman, Ryan Carey, saying, “Committee staff on both sides agreed with counsel to meet directly with the whistleblower next week, however the whistleblower has since backed out of that agreement and declined an attempt to reschedule.” Carey added that “Chairman Wyden’s staff stand ready to arrange a meeting on terms that comply with laws protecting taxpayer data and ensure a fair and rigorous investigation.”

CNN later updated the article to include a detailed denial of the staffer’s claim by Shapley’s legal team.

Emails obtained by The Federalist between Shapley’s lawyers and Wyden’s staff confirm the whistleblower’s version of events.

On Friday, May 19, 2023, Mark Lytle, Shapley’s Nixon Peabody lawyer, arranged for a conference call between the whistleblower’s legal team and Wyden’s office to discuss logistics for their client to sit for a transcribed deposition. The next email in the thread came from a Wyden staffer the day after Lytle and his co-counsel Tristan Leavitt, the president of Empower Oversight, had dispatched their May 22 letter to the chairs and ranking members of the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, as well as Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office.

In their May 22 letter, the whistleblower’s legal team summarized their version of what had transpired. They also noted that they had informed the Senate Finance Committee’s staff that Shapley would testify before the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday, May 26, and reiterated their preference for a single joint interview or, at minimum, an interview the previous day, May 25. 

“Unfortunately, the Finance Committee would not commit to a date consecutive to the House interview as an accommodation to our client’s concerns, as the staff had previously offered,” the letter stressed. Wyden’s staffers also refused to commit to an interview the Tuesday after the long Memorial Day weekend. The Senate Finance Committee’s political game-playing prompted the whistleblower’s attorneys to move forward with the House interview.

It was only then that Wyden’s office attempted to commit to an interview with the whistleblower before the Senate Finance Committee. In doing so, the staffer sent an email that both ignored Shapley’s letter and misrepresented the prior communications, the whistleblower’s legal team confirmed.  The email communications back up those claims, with the whistleblower’s legal team writing that during their Friday call, Wyden’s office “would not commit to *either* Thursday or the following Tuesday after the holiday.”

“We asked you to reconsider Thursday and you offered to check on logistics for Tuesday, expressing doubt that you could get a court reporter,” the email continued. “We did not hear from you over the weekend or Monday, and thus sent the letter articulating our position and the reasons for it.”

In response, Wyden’s staffer did not dispute that sequence of events, but instead wrote that since Tuesday was represented as a “‘distant third’ option, it was an option”: “In line with that agreement, Tuesday the 30th is the date the Committee is available to meet. Please let us know how you’d like to proceed by the end of the day.”

That final email confirms there was no agreement between the Senate Finance Committee and the whistleblower, as Wyden’s spokesman had told CNN, but only continued efforts to reach an agreement.

The Federalist requested clarification from Daniel Goshorn, the Wyden staffer on the email exchanges, asking whether the senator’s spokesman had misspoken when he said there was an “agreement” for Shapley to testify. The Federalist also asked whether Wyden’s office on Friday had been unwilling to commit to either a Thursday or a Tuesday interview. Finally, The Federalist queried Wyden’s office on why they won’t agree to a joint interview.

Goshorn did not respond with a comment by press time.

However, no matter the reason Wyden and the Democrat-controlled Senate Finance Committee have for refusing to conduct a joint interview with the House, that may be their only option at this point. The whistleblower is poised to appear on Friday before the Ways and Means Committee and indicated an unwillingness to testify again later before the Senate. 

Rep. Jason Smith, the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, shouldn’t leave the decision up to Wyden, though, because the Senate Democrat has proven himself to be putting politics above the public interest. Smith should sidestep the political posturing and, as I explained on Tuesday, use Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code to open the House Ways and Means’ interview of the whistleblower to the relevant Democrat and Republican members from both the House and Senate. 

If Smith refuses to do so, that will be as inexplicable as Wyden refusing to participate in a joint hearing — leaving one to wonder if the House Republican is playing politics as well.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Here’s How House Republicans Could Block Senate Democrats’ Efforts To Thwart IRS Whistleblower


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MAY 23, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/23/heres-how-house-republicans-could-block-senate-democrats-efforts-to-thwart-irs-whistleblower/

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The Democrat-controlled Senate Finance Committee is playing politics with the Hunter Biden IRS whistleblower, a letter sent Monday to the heads of the congressional oversight committees charges. But besides outing the partisan gamesmanship of the Senate committee, the whistleblower’s attorneys signal a solution to House Republicans: Use Section 6103(f)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code to sidestep Senate Democrats’ efforts to thwart the IRS whistleblower.

According to Monday’s letter, obtained by The Federalist, while attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) supervisory special agent have been working diligently for the last month to arrange for their client to testify on a bipartisan, bicameral basis to the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, “the Senate Finance Committee leadership has been unwilling to even consider a joint interview.” Nonetheless, the whistleblower remained committed to working with the Democrat-controlled Senate Finance Committee since it had indicated a willingness to coordinate scheduling to allow the whistleblower to testify on two consecutive days. 

But then, after scheduling their client’s private testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee for Friday, May 26, the Senate Finance Committee refused to commit to interviewing the whistleblower the prior day to allow the questioning to take place on two consecutive days. Thus, on Monday, the whistleblower’s attorneys declared, in essence, enough is enough, in their dispatch to the Senate and House: “Our client intends to appear on Friday, May 26th for the scheduled testimony agreed to by the House Ways and Means Committee,” the letter declared, then stressing that the whistleblower is unlikely to agree to testify separately before the Senate on another date.

Significantly, the letter from the IRS supervisory special agent’s attorneys added that their “client would welcome appropriately designated Senate staff to join and participate” in the House hearing. This invitation is huge because Section 6103(f)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code authorizes the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee to “designate or appoint” an agent to receive confidential tax information.

Because Republicans control the House Ways and Means Committee, its chair, Jason Smith, could designate Senate staffers to “join and participate” in the whistleblower’s House-transcribed interview. If Smith is wise, he will take the hint and designate as agents under Section 6103(f)(4) multiple Senate staffers for both Democrat and Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee. 

This would allow the whistleblower to achieve what he wanted: to be questioned on a bipartisan and bicameral basis. Additionally, by designating multiple Senate staffers, not merely staffers for the chair and ranking member, the House Ways and Means Committee can ensure Sen. Chuck Grassley’s top investigator participates in the transcribed interview — something Democrat Ron Wyden, the Senate Finance Committee chair, was blocking.

As the Washington Examiner reported Monday, the IRS whistleblower had included Grassley in his various correspondence to the committees because the Iowa senator is co-chair of the Whistleblower Protection Caucus and is “more trusted than any other public official by whistleblowers.” Grassley and his investigators are also “subject matter experts on both whistleblower protections and the Biden family business controversies,” as well as “very familiar with the specific statutes protecting sensitive tax information.”

Yet Wyden, who also serves as a co-chair with Grassley on the Whistleblower Protection Caucus, has refused to allow Grassley to participate in the Senate’s probe of the whistleblower’s claims.

But now, unless the Democrat-controlled Senate Finance Committee quickly reverses course and agrees to a joint — or, at minimum, consecutive — interview of the whistleblower, it won’t be Wyden deciding anything. It will be the Republican House Ways and Means chair. 

Whether the whistleblower’s Monday letter jolts Wyden and his fellow Democrats into action remains to be seen. Either way, Smith should designate Senate staffers, including Grassley’s lead investigator, as agents for the House Ways and Means Committee to ensure the fullest exposure possible for the IRS whistleblower’s testimony. 

That move might also teach Democrats not to play political games with whistleblowers who go to great lengths to ensure bipartisanship — as was done in mid-April when the IRS whistleblower’s attorneys first reached out to both Republican and Democrat leaders with their client’s offer to provide testimony of detailed “examples of preferential treatment” “improperly infecting decisions and protocols” applied during the investigation of a “high-profile,” “politically connected” individual. Unnamed sources later identified the IRS target as Hunter Biden and claimed that “specific DOJ employees placed strictures on questions, witnesses and tactics investigators may be allowed to pursue that could impact President Biden.” 

The whistleblower’s bipartisan pledge was then put into action when his attorneys, Tristan Leavitt of Empower Oversight and Mark Lytle of Nixon Peabody, LLP, worked with both the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee and the Democrat-controlled Senate Finance Committee to be designated the respective committee’s agents with authority to inspect Hunter Biden’s tax returns and related information under Section 6103(f)(4).

After learning the extent of their client’s evidence concerning the alleged misconduct involved in the Hunter Biden investigation, Leavitt and Peabody on May 5, 2023, provided separate “proffers” to both the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees. In those proffers, the attorneys summarized the substance of their client’s disclosures, paving the way for the client to testify before both committees.

But while the whistleblower remains committed to bipartisanship, Monday’s letter to the committees’ chairs and ranking members, as well as the heads of the Judiciary Committees and Grassley, exposed the delays and other disconcerting tactics undertaken by the Democrat-led Senate Finance Committee. And while the whistleblower lacks the power to force the Senate Democrats to play fair, as his attorneys highlighted in their letter, Chairman Smith of the House Ways and Means Committee is not so constrained.

Let’s hope Smith takes the hint.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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DAVID HARSANYI Op-ed: We Don’t Need A ‘National Divorce,’ We Need More Federalism


DAVID HARSANYI | FEBRUARY 21, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/21/we-dont-need-a-national-divorce-we-need-more-federalism/

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Marjorie Taylor Greene says the country needs a national divorce. “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government,” she tweeted. “Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”

Generally speaking, I’m sympathetic to the idea that the political left is unable to accept a truly diverse nation. Virtually every legislative policy proposal from modern Democrats — and every policy issued by edict — strengthens federal power and economic control over states. Modern Democrats are champions of direct democracy, an effort to undercut the choices of local communities and individuals. When they don’t get their way, the D.C. bureaucracy steps in to circumvent the will of states. And when courts stop them, Democrats work to delegitimize and weaken the judiciary. Just this week, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., argued states should simply disregard the Supreme Court when they don’t agree with a decision. Ignoring the division of power is far more likely to cause a national schism than any Greene tweet.

None of that means a “national divorce” — really succession, since other states are unlikely to concede to a split — isn’t a reckless thing for someone who took a vow to defend the Constitution to advocate. Even if we took a moment to seriously contemplate the idea, how would it be achieved? We aren’t separated ideologically into large geographic regions or even states, but rather urban, suburban, and rural areas. Conservatives like to share that map showing virtually the entire country painted in electoral red — and it matters more than Democrats like to admit. But we can’t discount that density also matters. A “national divorce” would create even smaller minorities and divisions, but little difference in the way of policy.  (How are the Greenes going to shrink the government when they won’t even reform entitlements?)

For that matter, where will Greene’s Georgia, which Joe Biden won in 2020 and now has two left-wing senators, end up in this split? How about purple states like Virginia or New Hampshire? Will we have 50 separate referendums? Will there be population exchanges like the one India and Pakistan undertook in 1947? If history is any indication, it’s the kind of situation that leads to political violence and economic ruin.

And, you know, you already have the freedom to move about the nation and find a place that suits your lifestyle and politics. That’s one of the reasons we’re a place that has room for a progressive vegan, the evangelical conservative farmer, the suburban moderate, and everyone in between.

During the past 42 years, the federal government has been divided for 30 of them. Over the past three presidencies, the president’s party lost at least one house after only two years. The instinct of the American public is to split power. The organic state of a divided nation is glorious gridlock — which is why the 10th Amendment exists. Now, it’s also true that leftists struggle with the notion of letting people in red states think, speak, and live in ways they dislike. There is a national political and cultural effort to homogenize us. And when Republicans appropriate the existing local power Democrats have used for decades to implement their own choices — as Ron DeSantis has done in Florida — leftists act as if we’re on the precipice of a dictatorship. But they have no power to stop him. Only Florida voters do. This is why federalism exists. It is why some states thrive and others don’t. And federalism is not only a more desirable solution than breaking the country into two, but also far more feasible.

It’s also worth noting that political divisions aren’t static. People can be persuaded. Events change perceptions. It is very likely that our kids and grandkids are going to face a different set of problems and divisions. Are we going to split into four in 50 years?

None of this is to argue there aren’t serious problems facing the nation, but Big Tech’s relentless highlighting of every decisive moment, every rabid voice, and every radical position clouds our view of reality. The nastier and crazier you pretend to be, the more misleading your tweets, and the more partisan you act, the more followers you can expect. The incentive of social media success is corrosive. Most of it just exacerbates political divisions.

In the real world, you probably live in proximity to plenty of people with different religious, cultural, and ideological values, yet, despite what you’ve heard, we’re a nation with negligible political violence. In many ways, despite the mess politicians have made, our lives are better than ever. Let’s keep it that way.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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Dems want climate change, tax hikes in infrastructure deal


Reported By Scott Wong – 04/29/19 12:49 PM EDT

The top two Democratic leaders on Monday told President Trump that any bipartisan infrastructure package needs to take into consideration climate change and include “substantial, new and real revenue” — a preview of the coming fight over tax hikes.

Trump will host Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) at the White House on Tuesday for discussions on a major infrastructure bill, one of the few policy areas that could see action amid divided government and as the 2020 race heats up.

Democrats want the measure for roads, bridges, waterways and other projects to be paid for with tax increases, and with a final price tag of at least $1 trillion over 10 years. Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget calls for $200 billion in federal spending on infrastructure, which White House officials say will leverage an additional $800 billion in investment through public-private partnerships over the next decade.

“America’s unmet infrastructure needs are massive, and a bipartisan infrastructure package must meet those needs with substantial, new and real revenue,” Pelosi and Schumer wrote in a letter to Trump on Monday. “We look forward to hearing your ideas on how to pay for this package to ensure that it is big and bold enough to meet our country’s needs.”

The leaders laid out other Democratic priorities: Any deal must extend beyond traditional infrastructure projects, take into account climate change, include “Buy America” provisions and provide jobs for a broad swath of workers.

“A big and bold infrastructure package must be comprehensive and include clean energy and resiliency priorities,” Pelosi and Schumer wrote. “To truly be a gamechanger for the American people, we should go beyond transportation and into broadband, water, energy, schools, housing and other initiatives. We must also invest in resiliency and risk mitigation of our current infrastructure to deal with climate change.”

“A big and bold infrastructure plan must have strong Buy America, labor, and women, veteran and minority-owned business protections in any package,” they added. “This bill can and should be a major jobs and ownership boost for the American people – manufacturers, labor contractors, and women, veteran and minority-owned businesses.”

Pelosi told reporters earlier this month that an infrastructure package “has to be at least $1 trillion. I’d like it to be closer to $2 trillion.”

Trump last year reportedly told lawmakers and senior White House officials that he was in favor of a 25-cent gas tax hike to help pay for an infrastructure overhaul. The gas tax, which supports the Highway Trust Fund and pays for road projects, has not been raised in more than two decades. But on Monday, a source familiar with Schumer’s thinking said the senator would not entertain any gas-tax proposal unless Trump also rolled back some tax cuts from his 2017 landmark tax law.

“Unless President Trump considers undoing some of the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy, Schumer won’t even consider a proposal from the president to raise the gas tax, of which the poor and working people would bear the brunt,” the Democratic source said.

Tuesday’s gathering marks the first meeting between Trump and the top Democratic leaders since the report from special counsel Robert Mueller was made public. It comes as multiple Democratic-led committees in the House have launched investigations into Trump, his administration, his business dealings and whether he obstructed justice.

A handful of other House Democrats will be attending Tuesday’s meeting: Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.), Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (S.C.), Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Luján (N.M.), Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (Mass.) and Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio (Ore.).

On the Senate side, Democratic attendees will include Minority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), Assistant Democratic Leader Patty Murray (Wash.), Democratic Policy Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), and Sens. Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Tom Carper (Del.), the ranking members of the Finance and Environment and Public Works committees, respectively.

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