An Internal Revenue Service whistleblower who claims to have faced retribution for raising alarms about Hunter Biden receiving special treatment during a federal investigation will testify publicly before a powerful House committee next week, and the person’s identity will finally be disclosed. 

The whistleblower’s testimony is expected to back up claims from another IRS whistleblower, Gary Shapley, who claims that the United States attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, said in private meetings that he was overruled by senior Department of Justice officials when he sought special counsel status to charge Mr. Biden with more crimes in jurisdictions outside Delaware. 

Mr. Weiss has denied this in a carefully worded letter to Senator Graham. Congressional Republicans say they are determined to get to the bottom of what they say is Mr. Biden’s “sweetheart deal” to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax evasion and likely avoid prison time.

The hearing, conducted by the House Oversight Committee, will take place on the afternoon of July 19. The two witnesses listed in the scheduling notice are Mr. Shapley, who has already spoken publicly, and “Whistleblower X,” Mr. Shapley’s colleague, who also claims that the investigation into the first son was mishandled. 

“Thanks to the good work of Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, IRS whistleblowers recently provided information to Congress that confirm many findings of our investigation,” the chairman of the committee, Congressman James Comer, said in a statement, referring to his panel’s months-long probe into the Biden family’s finances, which he says has found widespread evidence of self-dealing and suspicious payments to various Biden family members from foreign entities. 

Mr. Comer says the DOJ prevented Mr. Weiss from criminally prosecuting Mr. Biden for what he has said are criminal corruption schemes not only involving the first son, but also his father and uncle, Jim. 

“We need to hear from whistleblowers and other witnesses about this weaponization of federal law enforcement power,” Mr. Comer said. “This hearing is an opportunity for the American people to hear directly from these credible and brave whistleblowers.”

Mr. Shapley and his fellow whistleblower first brought their concerns to Congress earlier this year, saying the DOJ’s investigation into Mr. Biden was “slow-walked” by political appointees. “When I took control of this particular investigation, I immediately saw deviations from the normal process,” Mr. Shapley told “CBS Evening News” in May. “It was way outside the norm of what I’ve experienced in the past.”

Mr. Shapley and his colleague alerted Congress about the alleged wrongdoing only after going through the proper channels of filing a complaint with the DOJ, they say. After bringing these concerns to DOJ superiors, the IRS agents claimed to have been removed from the investigation into Mr. Biden, on which they had been working for nearly five years. They say this was an act of illegal retaliation. 

The saga of Mr. Biden’s legal troubles eventually culminated in what Republicans have called a “sweetheart plea deal” between the first son and Mr. Weiss, with whom the IRS whistleblowers worked. 

Mr. Biden has agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of “willful” income tax evasion, as well as enter a pretrial diversion program for drug abuse after he allegedly illegally purchased a firearm. A federal judge at Delaware is set to either affirm or deny the plea deal during a hearing at Wilmington on July 26. 

Mr. Shapley and his colleague are likely to rebut Attorney General Garland’s insistence that the investigation at Delaware, where the whistleblowers aided prosecutors, acted with full independence. Mr. Shapley, in an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier, claimed that Mr. Weiss told members of his office that he sought to bring felony charges against Mr. Biden on multiple occasions in multiple jurisdictions but faced pushback from DOJ officials in the nation’s capital.

“I even had him repeat that,” Mr. Shapley said about Mr. Weiss’s statement at that meeting, which occurred in October 2022. “Not only do I remember it crystal clear, but I documented it” in an email message, he added. 

The contradictions of Messrs. Shapley’s and Garland’s stories are irreconcilable, Republicans say, claiming that one of the two men must be lying. In a letter to Mr. Weiss, Mr. Graham asked if the Delaware prosecutor was ever denied from attaining special counsel status, which Mr. Shapley and his colleagues have claimed occurred. 

“Whistleblower allegations indicate that while you were investigating Hunter Biden you requested Special Counsel designation and were denied, and that you sought more serious charges and that attempt was rejected,” Mr. Graham wrote to Mr. Weiss, asking later in his message if that accusation was true. 

In his written response to Mr. Graham, Mr. Weiss said he had a “duty to protect confidential law enforcement information and deliberative communications” related to the investigation into Mr. Biden. He continued, saying he never formally “requested” special counsel status, though he did not go into any detail about discussions he may or may not have had about the subject with DOJ officials.

He also said he was granted full authority to bring charges in districts other than Delaware “if it proved necessary,” but again did not detail whether he sought charges only for DOJ officials to deem those charges unnecessary.