Investigative reporter Catherine Herridge sat down with IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler to talk about the way the agency protected Hunter Biden and his father Joe in 2020 and is going after Donald Trump this year. Shapley says it's written into the instruction manual.
“There's a list in the Internal Revenue manual that says what a sensitive person is, and it's exactly that: politicians, CEOs of companies, high net worth individuals. And then it requires countless additional approvals to work that investigation,” Shapley told Herridge.
Herridge is her own boss now, sending out no-charge email newsletters and posting content at CatherineHerridgeReports.com.
She took mild shots at Fox News, her employer for 23 years, when leaving for CBS in 2021, according to the entertainment news outlet Distractify.com.
"CBS News has always placed a premium on enterprise journalism and powerful investigations," she said. "I feel privileged to join a team where facts and storytelling will always matter."
Herridge on the move again
Herridge in February was among 20 CBS News staffers let go as part of a larger purge of 800 employees by Paramount, The New York Post reported.
Her termination became a footnote to what happened afterward – the seizure of confidential files pertaining to Herridge’s reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Ziegler told Herridge there was plenty of evidence leading into November 2020 that Hunter Biden was getting money from foreign sources for the Biden family, but he was prohibited from looking into it.
“There are a lot of overt investigative steps that we were not allowed to take because we had an upcoming election, and it related to the president's son, not even the candidate, and we weren't allowed to do certain investigative stuff.”
The Hunter Biden laptop story was not Russian disinformation, as initially claimed by multiple left-leaning show hosts, interview guests and 51 former intelligence officials.
Lying for Bidens
Shapley and Ziegler both say the IRS and FBI knew the Hunter Biden laptop was real well before the election.
“In our investigation, we knew that the laptop was real. DOJ knew that the laptop was real. FBI knew the laptop was real, yeah,” Shapley said.
Compare that with how the DOJ has been weaponized against Donald Trump, including releasing a detailed list of criminal accusations from prosecutor Jack Smith, just weeks before the election.
“Based on what we saw in the Hunter Biden case, that document would have never been released four weeks before an election,” Shapley said.
