In this episode of The Jenny Beth Show, Jenny Beth Martin sits down with Tristan Leavitt, President of Empower Oversight, to uncover the truth behind the Hunter Biden scandal and the courageous IRS whistleblowers who exposed political favoritism inside the Department of Justice. Leavitt shares the inside story of Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, the agents who risked everything to reveal how the Biden family was shielded from accountability. Learn how Empower Oversight defends whistleblowers, what really happened behind the scenes of Hunter Biden’s failed plea deal, and why protecting truth-tellers is essential to restoring integrity in government.
In this explosive episode, Jenny Beth Martin talks with Tristan Leavitt, President of Empower Oversight, about the IRS whistleblowers who exposed the Hunter Biden scandal and the political cover-up that followed.
Leavitt shares the inside story of Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, two career IRS agents who came forward with evidence of interference and favoritism that protected the Biden family from prosecution. From blocked investigations and retaliation inside the IRS to the unraveling of Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal, Leavitt reveals how courage and truth prevailed against the power of Washington’s political establishment.
The conversation also explores how Empower Oversight defends whistleblowers, strengthens legal protections, and exposes corruption within federal agencies — from the IRS and FBI to the Department of Homeland Security.
Whistleblowers vs. The Big Guy — the new book by Shapley and Ziegler — is available now at TruthVPower.com. All proceeds benefit Empower Oversight’s mission to protect whistleblowers and fight government corruption.
Topics covered:
The Hunter Biden investigation and IRS interference
How Empower Oversight protects whistleblowers
Retaliation against truth-tellers inside government
The media blackout and narrative control
The urgent need for stronger whistleblower protections
Learn more:
X/Twitter: @tristanleavitt | @jennybethm
Empower Oversight: https://empoweroversight.org
Tea Party Patriots Action: https://teapartypatriots.org
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Narrator (01:30):
Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:34):
In today's episode of the Jenny Beth Show, we're going to be talking about what happens when people inside the government tell the truth about what's going on and get punished for doing so. Today we're joined by Tristan Levitt, who's with Empower Oversight. This is a special nonprofit that helps represent whistleblowers in our government. We're going to learn a lot more about what whistleblowing is, why Tristan is involved in this kind of work, and what we can do to help support his work in the future. So Tristan, thanks so much for joining us today.
Tristan Leavitt (02:07):
Thank you so much for having me, Jenny Beth, it's really a pleasure.
Jenny Beth Martin (02:10):
So tell everyone, we'll talk about you in a second, but first talk about what is Empower Oversight?
Tristan Leavitt (02:17):
Power Oversight is a nonprofit, a 5 0 1 C3. It was created in 2021 by my partner Jason Foster, who I had worked with together with Senator Chuck Grassley in the past. And it is dedicated just to helping to expose wrongdoing in government and get knowledge of that to the right authorities. So when we worked for Congress, it was a little tough because there were a lot of groups on the left that would help funnel information to Congress and represent whistleblowers. There really were not similar groups on the right that you might think of maybe only focused on Freedom of Information Act requests and other things, but they weren't directly working with Congress. And so Empower Oversight was created to again, work directly with Congress and help encourage people to come forward knowing that we could provide legal protection and make sure that their information would get somewhere where it could make a difference.
Jenny Beth Martin (03:06):
And what made you, you're working with this, you work with Senator Grassley. Why did you decide to go do this? What motivates you to work with whistleblowers?
Tristan Leavitt (03:18):
So when I finished law school in 2011, I probably had a neutral slash maybe somewhat negative perception of the word whistleblower is a lifelong grassroots conservative. Certainly it takes something like administrative law and it covers how difficult it is to fire federal employees and other things. But right out of the gate, when I was hired out of law school, I started on the Senate judiciary staff of Senator Grassley, and the very first thing that was coming in the door as I started was a whistleblower, an A TF agent, don't even need to use the word whistleblower, an A TF agent who had been posted to Phoenix, Arizona and had seen up close this case that he tried to object to and Mexicans people in Mexico were being killed by AK 40 sevens that a TF was encouraging gun dealers to sell. And so he came to Senator Grassley and said, there's this case called Operation Fast and Furious, and I was so impressed with special agent John Dodson and over the next two years as a little baby lawyer, you're deposing the Deputy Attorney General and heads of agencies and other things.
(04:22):
But all of this was because this one courageous patriot had the desire to tell the truth. A US border patrol agent, Brian Terry was killed with a couple of those weapons were recovered at the scene and that was what really motivated him. And so thereafter I thought, I want to do everything I can to help people like that. That is a true hero. And so that kind of became my specialty both for Senator Grassley eventually handled his whistleblower protection policy. I went over to the House of Oversight Committee under Jason Chafetz and led the Clinton email investigation. But all throughout I continued working with whistleblowers. I did that for a bit during the Trump administration leading a couple of agencies. But when Jason Foster, the now board chair started in power and I had the chance to come over as its president, I was thrilled because protecting whistleblowers is so important and we knew that there would not be a shortage of things to investigate in the Biden administration.
Jenny Beth Martin (05:11):
Okay. And why is it so important to protect whistleblowers?
Tristan Leavitt (05:16):
Whistleblowers? I mean, if you think in general the best way to learn information is always going to be from people on the inside. Congress can send letters the number of tweets I've seen about strongly worded letters and the frustration there and people can file Freedom of Information Act requests. But if people on the inside aren't coming forward, we will never know some of the biggest problems in government. And in order for them to want to come forward to be willing, research shows they need two things. One is of course they need to feel like they can be protected and doing so. And two is that they need to believe that even risking the retaliation that might come is worth it because their disclosures will be acted upon. But so I've spent a lot of time against, Senator Grassley is the godfather of whistleblower protection. He has helped to establish these laws. I've spent a lot of time trying to strengthen them. Without those protections, no one would be willing to come forward. No one would be willing to say, this thing happened in government, the taxpayers ought to know about it, but why should I put my neck on the line? I can just quit. I can do all these other things to go and raise those issues, whether it's internally in the agency or outside the Congress or the press take some courage and it requires that protection.
Jenny Beth Martin (06:27):
I am so glad that your organization is working to do this. You worked for Senator Grassley, he is one of the most respected watchdogs in Washington dc. What lessons did you learn about how deep these investigations can go?
Tristan Leavitt (06:44):
He is so great at what he does because he is persistent and he doesn't just send a press release and forget it, which sometimes unfortunately is the trend on Capitol Hill. So not only does he follow up consistently after sending requests, his oversight will span years and even administration. So a new appointee is coming through his committee, he will hand them a binder of all the letters he sent that haven't received full answers, say, here's all of these document requests. And so I learned so much from that that just being willing to stick it out day after day, month after month, year after year has a big impact. Many of the things we've seen come out this year about Crossfire hurricane, about Arctic Frost, these are things that he's been asking for since 2017 or 2018 or 2020. Many of them, my partner Jason Foster, was the tip of the spear in Grassley's office investigating those things. But it's persistence. And another piece of it is he is not someone who is worried about whether he's going to be disinvited from the next cocktail party. He goes home on the weekends, he works his farm, so he has a very firm sense of what's right, what's best to see taxpayer dollars used wisely and what's wrong. And he sticks by that and doesn't let anyone try and influence him otherwise.
Jenny Beth Martin (08:06):
He really is absolutely amazing. And what you just said about cocktail parties is so important. I don't live in Washington DC and part of the reason that I have never really wanted to live there is because you become friends with the people that you live around and then it's harder to hold those people accountable because you don't want to upset them at the cocktail party on the weekend when you see them at whatever event or church you're going to. So it's just easier to kind of keep it more on a business level rather than those relationships like you just talked about. And I think that what you're saying about him going home rather than doing the cocktail parties is probably one of the reasons why he's such a good watchdog.
Tristan Leavitt (08:51):
It is for sure. Another thing is he really empowers staff and so he has some of the highest staff retention rates and that's helpful. When I was interviewed, I was told Senator Grassley wants to hire Little Grassley is literally the phrase they use. And the idea was you know what his values are, you know what his priorities are of whistleblower protection, of oversight, of finding ways, fraud and abuse. You shouldn't be sitting around waiting for someone to tell you what to do anytime you didn't have Operation. Fast and Furious was essentially a two year long investigation leading to the holding of Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt. So that took a lot. Once that wound down, again, you're still reviewing whistleblower disclosures as they come in, but if there aren't new whistleblower disclosures, you're reading the newspaper, you're just looking everywhere for where can we add value for the taxpayers? Where can we find those things? And so him empowering his staff so that if you were on a call with an agency and you were able to threaten and say, Hey, he means business when he sends this letter, he's not just going to send it and forget it. You could know that he would back you up if the agency continued to fight against it.
Jenny Beth Martin (09:57):
And then when they fight against it, what does that tell us about those agencies and the corruption within those agencies?
Tristan Leavitt (10:07):
A lot. Unfortunately, it is the norm and the challenge is manyfold in some ways. Part of the challenge is that Congress has really seeded its oversight authority to the executive branch, and that would be a whole other discussion. But seeing something like the Chevron Supreme Court decision overturned is significant because Congress has consistently year after year just kind of handed over its responsibilities and with that it's really kind of stopped doing oversight. So most agencies are not accustomed to having to answer lots of detailed questions on a regular basis to Congress. And depending on where you fall on the ideological spectrum and who's in the White House, I understand that some on the right at various times say, no, no, no, we don't want a strong Congress. We don't want them investigating us. But from my perspective, the Constitution is all about safeguards, checks and balances, and you have to have a strong Article one branch of government for the full system of government to operate well and clearly there are a whole host of problems with how our government operates right now, but that lack of oversight from Congress not doing its constitutional duty and guarding the purse strings, I think has just led most agencies to view it as the default that they don't often have to answer hard questions.
(11:19):
So sometimes they are trying to hide specific things, but a lot of the times there's just so much bureaucratic indifference that well, probably nothing's going to happen. You're not going to follow up on this letter, you're not going to follow up on what you requested. And again, a fair chunk of the blame for that goes back to Congress for not following up, for not holding officials accountable. I will say it was really an eyeopening moment for me, and I think a little bit of a sign of times to come back in 2012 when Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress because the mechanisms Congress has used over the years have really kind of dwindled to hold people accountable. It used to be if you were held in contempt, the sergeant at arms of the House or the Senate would go and arrest somebody and go put them in Congress jail.
(12:02):
Right? Obviously that's a temporary arrangement, but the idea was until you produce these documents or give this testimony, you are held accountable Today most people would view that as a crazy idea. The last time it happened was I think 1920 I think related to Teapot Dome. But so for Congress to hold someone in contempt, they send a criminal referral to the US attorney for the District of Columbia as the procedure. The attorney for the District of Columbia's boss is the attorney general. So the DCS attorney said, I'm not going to enforce that. Then Congress had to rely on a civil contempt suit just going to sue to try and enforce its prerogative. So again, for the article one branch of government to not have a way to enforce subpoenas unless we've seen counter examples, and those are when the executive branch and the judiciary want to hold someone accountable. When they're eager to get somebody, they're more than willing, but when they're against it, Congress has really in some ways moved to board a toothless posture. So there was a little bit of an emperor with no close element with the holder contemp citation, and I think that's influenced how people since then have treated some congressional investigations.
Jenny Beth Martin (13:08):
And then what winds up happening sometimes, and part of the reason why what you do is so important is that you've got Congress doing the investigations, then you have the people inside of the executive branch delaying or stalling or not giving Congress what they need to give Congress. But part of the reason that Congress is asking the questions is because whistleblowers have come forward. And then do those agencies wind up retaliating against the whistleblowers? Do they know who they are? Are they anonymous initially? How does that part work?
Tristan Leavitt (13:50):
So there's a lot of ways it can work. And manning two whistleblower hotlines for two different committees, I ended up giving a lot of the same advice to people often, and one of the first things I would note is whistleblower protections are not a magic shield or umbrella. They're just laws that are out there. And so in order to be vindicated through those laws, you have to go through a legal process. So the best thing is for there not to be any retaliation, right? That's the ideal scenario. Now, in an ideal world, if someone came forward to me and I'm a supervisor and they say, Hey, there's a problem here in the office, I should be willing to listen to them and hear that out. And if that problem is somehow attributable to me as well to say, wow, I am so sorry for what's happened, let's try and fix this.
(14:30):
That's a healthy management environment. Obviously we've all been environments where that's not necessarily the case, and in the federal government there can be a real challenge. So if someone comes forward, I would encourage them, if you're able to be anonymous, that anonymity is the best protection. If no one ever knows that you are the one providing this information, you can't be retaliated against. The challenge is that sometimes, usually no one wakes up, rolls out of bed and thinks I'm going to blow the whistle to Congress, right? Usually they've been talking about it. They say to their coworker, Hey, can you believe what's going on? They'll maybe say something to a supervisor. Other things. So often if Congress is asking questions, they have a suspicion. I've even seen where it was not the actual whistleblowers. There was an admiral who retaliated against four different people that he was absolutely sure had done something, had been the ones to blow the whistle on something, and none of them were the ones.
(15:18):
But so the risk is if you are likely to be suspected, it's better to just kind of plant the flag openly and notoriously and say, I've talked to Congress. And in those cases then you kind of kick in those whistleblower protections otherwise to try and prove they were retaliating against. How do you know that they knew you blew the whistle? You may have a difficult time proving that. So you see all those different permutations in the real world, real world as you ask. Sometimes agencies know they definitely know what the laws are, but again, it's human nature if you feel like you're being punched to punch back. And so it is extremely common for Whistlers to be retaliated against and it can range from something as subtle, and I would say probably not prohibited by the law. I mean, you could go up to someone and say, I've heard of people being told you Dirty rat.
(16:06):
How dare you do this? Is that something that the law protects against? It's not a personnel action that goes all the way up to someone getting fired. And they may try and make up an excuse and say, Joe Schmo was always really a horrible performer. And then you end up in a scenario of them having to produce their performance appraisals and say, no, everything was great until I blew the whistle on this thing. So it's a complicated area of law, but the biggest protections are to be anonymous if you can, and to make sure that you have good legal representation that you know what the law is if possible, before you even blow the whistle.
Jenny Beth Martin (16:37):
Okay, that makes sense. Now, you most recently have been involved in helping the IRS whistleblowers. Would you elaborate on who they are, what happened with that and refresh people's memories about them?
Tristan Leavitt (16:56):
Absolutely. So in the beginning of 2023 IRS supervisory special agent Gary Shapley had come to a decision point. He had been the supervisor on the Hunter Biden case for three years At that point before that, Joe Ziegler, the case agent, had opened the case in 2019, and he and Gary together had run into roadblocks of various sorts. Some of them had been IRS and Justice Department unwillingness to look at some aspects of Hunter Biden's activities. Some of it had been slow walking, especially as it related to the 2020 election. And even again in the 2022 election delaying decisions saying, well, we should wait on this until after an election or we can't afford this getting out in some way, even when not only was Hunter Biden not a candidate, but in 2022, Joe Biden wasn't a candidate. So all of these things added up together, including issues with the US Attorney's Office and not moving forward and prosecuting a case that they had already agreed was a good case.
(17:59):
So bottom line, Gary decided to come forward. He was the case agent on the Credit Swiss investigation, so the one that really broke Swiss Bank secrecy, and he had worked with another attorney named Mark Lidle was the prosecutor at the time, and Mark had left and gone in private practice. So he went to Mark who understands the taxpayer secrecy laws very well. But Mark said, I don't know. I've really never worked with Congress and I don't know anything about these whistleblower protections. So they came to us at Empower Oversight, and so we helped Gary to prepare his disclosures. We sent a letter in mid-April informing Congress that there was a whistleblower not identifying who there was, but they wanted to come forward with information about a high profile individual. The taxpayer privacy laws are interesting, and I know you'll be able to relate to this after the 2013 targeting, and even before that, going back to 1998, actually, the Senate had investigated a lot of IRS abuses and frankly, it is fascinating to me as a student of history to go back and read even the church report, the sections on the IRS.
(19:00):
You read those and it could be talking exactly about the 2013 targeting. So there are longstanding challenges with the IRS being abused because of that, there are laws that have been put in place to say that the IRS can't release taxpayer information. Well, they didn't even have a clear exception for someone going to an attorney to share potentially something they wanted to blow the whistle on. There is a whistle blowing exception go to Congress, but that was unclear. So we sent this initial letter. Eventually as many will remember, this resulted in both Gary Shapley and Joe Zieg were being interviewed by the House Ways and Means committee, that committee voting to release those transcripts publicly as this was happening on the one side with Congress, the Justice Department specifically the Delaware Youth Attorney's Office obviously knew it was coming down the pike. Just as I described earlier, Gary had been very vocal inside the IRS as had Joe about the problems with this case and with squashing it.
(19:52):
So they came up with the strategy to just try and tie this all up by part, giving a plea agreement to Hunter Biden initially it was going to have no felony charge at all. They realized that would look ridiculous. So the plea agreement that came out, the many, many kind of mocked as a slap on the wrist as a sweetheart plea deal really came about only because these guys had come forward. The IRS whistleblowers were it not for them, I think nothing would've happened with the case at all. But because of the information they brought forward, it caused a really great attorney, a really great judge in Delaware, judge Noca, Mary Ellen Noca to look closer at the case. Hunter Biden's plea deal got scotched and ultimately he was is prosecuted because of what these guys did. Joe Biden pardoned his son, and we've seen some in the last, just 24, well in the last recent time from the House Oversight Committee about how some of the later pardons of family members done by Autopen, whether those were even valid, but much of this would not have been known were it not for these whistleblowers coming forward and validating things like the Hunter by the laptop At the time that the New York Post wrote their story about the laptop, it had been in FBI custody for a year and it was brought into FBI custody on a search warrant that Joe Ziegler had signed.
(21:13):
So it was only because of these guys. They even had the laptop to begin with and they had to keep silent through all of 2020. They were still trying to work inside the system hoping that ultimately this case would get prosecuted, but as the FBI and others allowed the world to be told that this was all a Russian disinformation campaign. So what they did really changed the course of history and it's been remarkable to work with them and to try and ensure that they were protected.
Jenny Beth Martin (21:38):
They really are remarkable. I have not met them personally, but I did watch their testimony before Congress and I remember that as I watched them, I just kept thinking, if only every IRS agent were like this and trying to do what is right and follow the law and do so justly, but not do target people the way that I was targeted and my organization was targeted and TEA pretty groups around the country were targeted but also not give favors to people even if they're on your side of the political aisle. So you just have to do what's right and follow the law and set aside all those other outside factors. And I appreciate the fact that they worked so hard to do that.
Tristan Leavitt (22:27):
Yeah, it's particularly remarkable because Joe Ziegler, I think would still consider himself, but certainly due at the time, a Democrat and a progressive Democrat. And nevertheless, he took seriously the rhetoric of the Democrat Party that no one is above taxpayer laws, and frankly, it was a real eyeopening experience for him. I've related this in a couple of contexts, but one closed door hearing that we had with the Ways and Means Committee, ultimately afterwards they voted to release the transcript, but all of that testimony was behind closed doors, and he looked so plaintiff as he looked over at the Democrat side of the aisle there and said, I'm a Democrat. I believe that people would stand up for what was right no matter who was involved in this. And I had been so disappointed and it was very much brushed off, but to me that was a very real raw emotional moment because he had genuinely thought when he came forward, we tried to tell him otherwise, and Gary tried to tell him otherwise, but that people would just see the facts of things and say, oh, well it doesn't matter. His last name's Biden rights right and Wrong is wrong. And he was so disappointed that didn't turn out that way.
Jenny Beth Martin (23:42):
Sometimes you learn the truth about the government in the most unpleasant ways, and I'm sure that was very, very unpleasant for him. Now, these two men have written a book, right? Tell us a little bit about that book.
Tristan Leavitt (23:57):
Yeah, the Whistleblowers versus the Big Guy, it will be released on November 11th. These guys are still federal employees. In fact, they're helping to run the IRS right now. So they were promoted to be senior advisors to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant near the beginning of the year, near the beginning of the administration, and they had been working on reforms inside the IRS, so they're not able to receive a profit and they wouldn't want to. Anyway, their goal all along has been once it was clear they were getting through this that they wanted to try and help other future whistleblowers. Empower Oversight actually owns the rights to the book and all profits will come to Empower Oversight. We're very excited about it. It really tells their story and the firsthand trials that they went through and bringing this forward, not just because of the retaliation from inside the agency, but because they were targeted by the Biden family.
(24:45):
There was a lot said about them publicly, A lot of lies that were spread, there was real personal cost. Joe's marriage broke up because of it, and it was very difficult. At one point, Gary Shapley decided to come forward and publicly identify himself. When we sent the initial letter to Congress that I referenced earlier, we knew that inside the government they knew exactly who was blowing the whistle. He had already told them he was going to do this, that he believed what had happened was wrong, that he was going to Congress, but his identity wasn't publicly known. And before his interview by the Ways and Means committee, but after Mark Lidle and I had done a proffer with Congress where we explained the information he wants to share so they can be prepared and confirm that they want to interview him, he started having strange vehicle drive up and down his road as his kids were getting ready for school.
(25:31):
That was what caused him to go and go on CBS news and publicly identify himself was he thought either this is someone very nefarious or it's a reporter or someone that's going to out me in this way. I want to be the one to share this information myself. But he had a lot of concerns for his family throughout this whole process. So the book really shows the personal toll that it took and also just the courage that it took for them, but how, because of their perseverance, they came through on the other side and have continued to serve the American people.
Jenny Beth Martin (26:03):
They obviously were not treated fairly or the way that whistleblowers should be treated. You mentioned that they had retaliation inside the agency as well as targeting from the Biden family and then that very, it is not good when people are driving past your house like that and you can tell they're slowing down, looking at your house and you don't know why and you have children inside, that is not a good feeling at all. What kind of other retaliation did they experience and what kind of targeting from the Bidens did they experience?
Tristan Leavitt (26:44):
Good question. So from within the agency, it's important to understand that this international financial tax crimes group that Gary led, and Joe was one of the members of about 12 agents. They were and are the SEAL Team six of international tax investigations. So they are the elite team within the IRS. They come from all over their criminal investigation division. So wherever they're the highest performing agents, they get a chance to be in this unit. And Gary had helped to also stand up a unit cooperating with partners in various of various countries. So partnering with the uk, with Australia and others on tax enforcement issues. He'd played a very big role in all of these issues within the IRS. There were promotions and one just right as soon as he was blowing the whistle, a promotion to help lead and staff that group, he had stood up several years earlier.
(27:37):
As soon as he blew the whistle, as soon as he started butting heads with US attorney David Weiss and Delaware, he got passed over for that promotion. It was the first of a number of promotions that he would be passed over for as soon as they came forward. They immediately began to be isolated. So all the calls that they'd been on before, the groups that they helped to provide information for and lead, they would be left off of the invites. They were really just put in a corner, so to speak, and it was really detrimental to their investigations unrelated to this. So Gary would have agents that needed to travel to other countries as part of their various investigations, and he could not get his supervisory chain to even respond to their travel requests. So they just totally ignored him. Once he came forward and blew the whistle, it was a very long road.
(28:22):
At one point he realized that he went through three different supervisors. They were all promoted despite the retaliation, the most recent one before this administration. He had been again requesting permissions and other things and was getting no response. The supervisor was telling him, well, it's a long process. Eventually he made clear to that supervisor in January of this year, if we don't move on this, this investigation is going to die. Again, totally unrelated to Hunter Biden or anything else he learned. He later realized when an email made its way around to him that that supervisor had doctored his first email from December and dated it in January and was only sending it up for the very first time. So they played all sorts of games with them, but again, the key thing for them within the agency was they weren't promoted, they were pushed. They were one time told, if you don't find a promotion, you're going to have to leave the agency within a few months.
(29:09):
That became very public right before the election last fall, and he said, I've been passed over for these promotions, the promotions I'm entitled to. So they were going to use that as a way that he would've had to either take a demotion or leave outside of the agency. It was fairly wild. Again, the attacks on these guys from the very outset were significant, and what we learned throughout the course of 2023 was that there was kind of this whisper campaign claiming that they had broken the law, and this is a developing area because there were some recent legal developments, but just to track in time how it happened, we were at one point contacted by a New York Times reporter in the summer of 2023 who said, hunter Biden's attorneys are claiming that your guys broke the law. How would you respond to that? He said, even they've sent a letter to the Justice Department.
(29:59):
We couldn't get them to share that letter with us. But the major concern, it obviously raised for us, when their client's dad is the president of the United States, they're telling his administration, you need to prosecute these guys for coming forward. And so there's been a lot of discussion about what, again, what the taxpayer privacy laws allow, whether they were allowed to go to Congress, which we believe the law is very clear on whether after Congress had released the information, whether they were allowed to speak to the press about it, which we believe there's a very strong precedent for and has been done in the past, such as when Donald Trump's tax returns were voted to be released by the committee and then everybody talked about them. No one said, well, it's only the committees to talk about. Everyone in the public talked about that, and no one claimed that it was a violation of taxpayer privacy laws for President Trump.
(30:43):
So that just built and built with that kind of behind the scenes campaign to get these guys prosecuted. We ultimately enlisted chairman Jim Jordan and Chairman Jamie Comer and chairman Jason Smith, the three that had been investigating from house judiciary, house oversight house ways and means. They sent a letter in September of 2023 to Hunter Biden's attorney saying, we've heard that this is going on. You need to produce all these communications that you've been engaged in behind the scenes to try and get these guys prosecuted. And Abby Lowell did send those to Congress. They became public and he immediately then turned around. I think it kind of made it look a little silly that they didn't use the mechanism that there was in place where if you believe your privacy has been violated, there is a provision where you can sue. And that's what they did.
(31:35):
They sued alleging that Gary and Joe had violated Hunter Biden's taxpayer privacy. And so then we had to defend against that and the IRS rather than defending against what was to us a very frivolous lawsuit. The IRS didn't talk to us about it at all. The Justice Department attorneys representing the agency, their first response to that claim, they didn't mention at all the very specific exception in the taxpayer privacy laws. It's 26 USC 61 0 3, there's a section that says whistleblower disclosures. They didn't even mention that in their first response to the court. So we thought, how on earth they are going to take a dive, the Biden administration because they're happy to see these guys prosecuted Soultimately. We had to fight that battle. We ultimately launched a defamation suit. And so again, there were a lot of aspects of that, but just obviously anyone that picked up a newspaper or turned into any media that wasn't on the right, all that they were left with the impression of was these guys broke the law. They shouldn't have said anything about Hunter Biden. And that really harmed their reputations and again, also worried them. Of course, they got death threats and other things in email and voicemails and other things like that. I'm sure you know all about that kind of thing, but those don't get a lot of play claiming that these guys with their stellar careers were criminals essentially did get a lot of play in a lot of places.
Jenny Beth Martin (32:59):
Yeah, of course. Because the bad news is what sells. And also the mainstream media would've done anything they could to tarnish the people who were pointing fingers at the Bidens. Do you think that they were treated this way, aside from what was going on with Hunter Biden and his attorney, but within the agency, do you think they were treated this way because they blew the whistle or because they blew the whistle about the Biden family?
Tristan Leavitt (33:33):
To be honest, I think it was a combination of both. I think that there were certainly some that seemed friendlier to the Bidens or who did not want to see the Bidens crossed. There were others who, there's not any kind of obvious political motive, but they didn't like their conduct being called into question. And when Gary testified in front of the House Oversight Committee, one of the things that he shared there was just how broken the IRS's promotion process had been, that basically if you wanted to move up the chain in the IRS, the way to do it was by keeping your head down, not doing anything significant, avoiding significant action and being willing to move anywhere in the country. And that was how they promoted them. And so when Joe tried to open the case initially, people told him big cases, big problems. And so there were people that, again, not necessarily political motive, but were just like, I don't want to be associated with that.
(34:21):
And that kind goes back to again, that decision to blow the whistle. Some people say for some as a person of faith, for myself, I've come to view it as an act of conscience for some that they say, I have to do this. My conscience compels me to other people say, it's not worth the trouble. I'm not going to get in the way of this. No matter what information I have, it's not my responsibility to right this wrong. So a lot of people who buried their heads in the sand and allowed Gary and Joe to be isolated within the agency didn't like being called out, I believe. And that kind of further added fuel to the fire when those people became supervisors, when at the beginning of the Trump administration, when the commissioner of the IRS WFO left, the person who became the acting commissioner was W'S deputy, and he was one of the people that had been involved in retaliating against these guys.
(35:05):
When Joe, before he made the decision to come forward and blow the whistle, he sent a very plaintiff email to the entire IRS leadership saying, I've done my job. I've worked this case so hard, I have skipped vacations. I've poured my life into this case for years. And now to see it done in this way, to see it rewarded with a US being removed from the case just as a plea agreement is going forward. And the deputy was the person that had sent that over as referral to the Justice Department saying, Joe May have violated grand jury rules by naming the case, by saying the name of the case in an email. He claimed that the IRS Commissioner wasn't allowed to know that. And so again, these were all people that had been a part of the system and that it allowed these guys to be retaliated against. And I think that helped to expand it further because they didn't want see these guys tell their story
Jenny Beth Martin (35:55):
And what Gary and Joe were after was the law being applied equally to all Americans, right? I mean, at the end of the day, that's what drove them to wind up blowing the whistle about this. Am I right about that or do I have that wrong?
Tristan Leavitt (36:12):
You're absolutely right. I mean, it is convoluted on top of what you're saying. I mean, it's not Congress's responsibility to enforce the law. So they were not saying Congress, you should go prosecute Hunter Biden or you should, whatever. They just believed that it was important for Congress to be aware of one, the obstruction and the obstacles when they were trying to investigate Hunter Biden two, that they were never allowed to investigate Joe Biden. That when they said, well, there seems to be some commingling of finances, some other things here, we need to ask about emails like 10 held by H for the big guy, which seemed awfully strongly as Tony Bobinski would also confirm to Congress to mean that Hunter Biden was holding 10 million for his father, Joe Biden. And they were told, no, you can't ask about that. We're not going to allow that.
(37:00):
And so search warrants, other things were obstructed. So that's kind of that second bucket. The third bucket was that when David Weiss was held over from the Trump administration to the Biden administration and the Biden administration touted again and again, particularly Merrick Garland, this is a Trump US attorney that's leading this investigation. Now those who know how Congress and these appointments work know that, I mean, the blue slip process has become a subject of some contention recently, right? But during the first Trump administration, it's the Delaware Senators, both of whom are Democrats that had to sign off on any names. So this was not some big MAGA guy. This just happened to be the career guy that both Republicans and Democrats could agree on. And as we now know, he was allowing his staff and even himself participating in this case being slow rolled. And when he realized that Gary wanted to come forward about it, he particularly targeted Gary and retaliated against him.
(37:55):
And so because of all of those factors, all of this coming together here, the thing that Gary and Joe also wanted Congress to understand was David Weiss didn't have the full authority to move forward with the case. Even once they agreed there was a case, he said, these Irish charges are good. They took them to the US attorney for DC where charges could be brought who was a Biden appointee, and that person's first assistant initially said, this looks like a good case. We'll work it up. Then the US attorney got involved and he said, we are not doing that case. Similar, they went to the Southern District of California, or sorry, the central District of California. Similarly, he had just barely been confirmed by the Senate as an appointee of Biden, and he also said they weren't doing the case. So Gary and Joe wanted Congress to understand that these conflicts of interest had been involved in the case, whatever the outcome was that wasn't up to them, but they wanted to make sure Congress knew this process for ensuring there aren't conflicts in these cases is broken. It's not working.
Jenny Beth Martin (38:49):
If it had been any other person doing the things that they were seeing Hunter Biden and the family doing, the Biden family doing, how would the IR Rs have treated anyone else? Would they have just brushed it under the rug or made this kind of sweetheart plea bargain deal, or would it have been prosecuted differently or handover investigated differently?
Tristan Leavitt (39:16):
Yeah, Gary and Joe very much believed that it would've been handled differently right from the outset. Their manual says if you open a case, you're supposed to interview the subject within 30 days to give them a chance to explain what's going on. They were not able to, they didn't interview Hunter Biden until over a year into the case before they went public. And in part that was because the FBI was involved, there were other charges they were looking at. But again and again, they felt like this was handled differently and they wanted to just believe that everyone was acting in good faith, that it was just because of the unique circumstances of this case, but eventually the list became too long. They could no longer believe that it was good faith and believe that it really was favoritism or political based decision making. So they point to examples of others where there were similar crimes and who were treated very differently from how Hunter Biden was. And I think that's very compelling.
Jenny Beth Martin (40:09):
I completely agree with that. They've written a book and the book is called Whistleblowers versus a Big Guy, and it's available on November the 11th. I just want to repeat that so that everyone who's listening and watching can go get a copy of the book and they need to read and understand what these men went through when they were shining the light and speaking truth to power.
Tristan Leavitt (40:38):
Absolutely. Actually, it's funny you say that. The website we've set up for this is truth v power.com, so that people can go directly and order the book there. It's available for presale now. And we really do want people, again, not only to understand what these guys went through in their courage, but to understand how bureaucracy works. When people talk about the deep state, this is what it is, these career bureaucrats that are there that don't want truth to come out, and that in these subtle ways, many of them are not ways that are prohibited by law necessarily. Law enforcement officers have a lot of discretion, but this book helps to explain how that operates as well as the media suppression. The fact that this story was starting with the Biden laptop was treated the way that it was, and then even when they came forward, the way that Gary and Joe's disclosures were received by the media, I think speaks volumes.
(41:27):
It was very similar. Last summer in 2024, so I guess a year and change ago, whistleblowers came to us from the Air Marshal service about Tulsi Gabbard being monitored through a program called Quiet Skies. Maybe some of you have heard about that, and I can go into more detail about that, but the biggest thing that really struck me at the time was it got zero mainstream media coverage. No one talked about it. And when Tulsi Gabbard in September, so six weeks, two months after this happened, mentioned something about it on C Nnn, they said, oh, we haven't heard anything about that. We tried so hard to get people engaged in reporting on these things. But again, if the media is not interested in narrative, the mainstream media just won't touch it, and it just languishes in silence.
Jenny Beth Martin (42:10):
It does. And as much as the mainstream media drives us crazy, they drive the news about what a lot of people in the country, in the country talk about the Tulsi Gabbard situation. Do you want to just elaborate on that one just a little bit since you were involved in that as well?
Tristan Leavitt (42:32):
Yeah, absolutely. So these Air Marshals, when they contacted us, this program, quiet Skies, is something that has been around for several years, since 2018. Several Air Marshals blew the whistle on and at that time saying it was a waste. What the program would do is based on someone's flight reservation. So you go to buy a ticket, it would run these rules and based on those, it would cause the air marshals to flag certain individuals, not only for additional screening. We've all been through the hassle of screening of the TSA, and if you ever get a quad S, the four s is on your boarding pass where there's extra, extra screening, they will pat down every item you have in your luggage on your body in person. But even after that, if you're a selective request, guys, when you get to the gate to board, they'll have dogs sniffing.
(43:26):
The sniffing teams come, they will have, you have to go through all these things. They do it in front of all the other passengers. It's humiliating. And then when you get on the plane, you have three air marshals monitoring your every move unbeknownst to you. So they're literally taking notes on this individual sat down, they talked to this person, they wouldn't use the restroom at this time. Here's what we could see on their phone. They're trying to look at what they're looking at. And the crazy thing about all of this is unlike say a Tara watch list or anything else, this has no predicate. You don't need probable cause for a terrorist thing, but there's no reason to believe other than these metrics in some system that just say, well, your travel patterns look unusual. And so Tulsi Gabbard had been flagged, and of course the TSA would later claim that it was because of these travel patterns, but it happened the day after she went on Laura Ingram and criticized Kamala Harris.
(44:18):
It was in that crazy one week period when Joe Biden announced he wouldn't be the nominee. There was that two day period where people thought, oh, is there going to be an open primary here somehow? And then Kamala Harris managed to get it locked down. It was still before the convention, but so Tulsi went on Fox and criticized Kamala who she had run in the primary against four years earlier as well as against Joe Biden. And it was the morning after that that she got added to this program. And so for these whistleblowers coming forward, they strongly believed it looked like political targeting in addition to that program in many ways being a seeming waste of money. Anyway, the Inspector General for Department of Homeland Security had already in a report a few years ago, found that this program had never stopped a single instance of a threat to aviation security. So I recently testified before Rand Paul's Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee alongside Matt Taibbi and some others about this program and all of its challenges, but it really was seemingly used in a way that the TSA has never given any further indication to lead us to believe anything other than that. It was used to target Tulsi Gabbard for speaking out about Kamala Harris's nomination.
Jenny Beth Martin (45:26):
That is horrible. Is that program still in place?
Tristan Leavitt (45:30):
It was discontinued this year. Christie Nome abolished the program. They found other terrible examples in it. So Senator Jean Shahin's husband was also similarly added to a list, and then he called the TSA administrator and they took him off the list and put him on a no extra screening list for all future. Again, the political favoritism was just wild here at that program, so it was discontinued. But the whole point of this hearing recently was to ensure that it doesn't get reinstated and also to highlight that other TSA programs can be abused. We have represented someone whose wife was in Washington DC on January 6th, 2021, and she was at the ellipse to watch President Trump. But after President Trump's speech, she went back to her hotel. Well, she was entered in her husband and air marshal found, and he was one of the witnesses alongside me at this hearing.
(46:25):
He is responsible for arranging this coverage of, they call it special mission coverage when you have the three marshals along with you, and he's making those assignments. And then he comes across his wife's name and in the reason for it says she was inside the capitol on January 6th, and he objectively knew that wasn't true. And when he raised that with his supervisors, they said, well, that was put there by the FBI, you just pretend you didn't see that and you probably shouldn't do anything about that. Well, he has seen it. If it was really an issue, TSA should have better walled him off from that. And so it took him a long time to get the FBI to take that off. Again, one of many, many unfortunate situations like that around January 6th where people were misidentified or just excessively mistreated. And so we really wanted to highlight that it's not just quiet skies. These programs can be abused if there's not very heavy scrutiny. Anything that happens in secret, if there's not some transparency mechanism to allow Congress or others to conduct oversight of it, it will be abused.
Jenny Beth Martin (47:28):
Well, and in that case, it sounds like he was able to get his wife removed from the list, but how many other people were on it because of something related to January 6th or any other reason, but they didn't know someone who could go pull that string and get their name removed. It's a's a horrible abuse of power.
Tristan Leavitt (47:49):
It is. And he spoke about that in the hearing saying, I knew she wasn't there for the other people on the list. I have no idea. We had to rely on the FBI and we don't know what criteria the FBI used. And again, in other cases it looks like it was abused. And so again, you, that's why you've got to have oversight. You've got to protect whistleblowers. They are the front lines, they're the frontline defense in our federal government. Patriots were willing to speak up when they see bad things happening without them. There are so many things we would never know about. We wouldn't know about Quiet Skies. We never wouldn't known about operation Fast and Furious. We wouldn't have known about the political favoritism in the Hunter Biden case. So we want to make sure as people read this book for instance, that it helps them to understand why whistleblowers are so important and why it is important that there is truth to speak up against power.
Jenny Beth Martin (48:35):
Now, there was a Whistleblower Protection Act in 2016. Correct. And is that enough? Do you think that there need to be additional protections for whistleblowers?
Tristan Leavitt (48:48):
So if I'm thinking of the right thing that you're referring to, 2016, I worked on a law that actually related to FBI whistleblower protections, and it is very unique of the FBI, the Modern Whistleblower Protection Regime, if you will, that statute, all the related laws were passed in 1978, and then Senator Grassley authored something called the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 that strengthened those laws. There've been a couple of updates, but left out of all of those was the FBI, and we've really seen the impact of that. So when I got this policy portfolio in Senator Grassley's office in 2012, that was a key priority for me was to try and strengthen that because the FBI agents don't have the same process on paper. They supposedly have these same protections, unlike the intelligence community where the protections are extremely limited and there are some reasons for that, but we've seen some unfortunate impact of that.
(49:40):
But the FBI is like the A TF. It is like DEA or other agencies, and yet they have a special carve out in the law. The law was initially passed just a few years after J Edgar Hoover's passing, and they just have a lot of clout. So in 2016 was the first time we were able to get into law something saying that you could blow the whistle to your supervisor and it'd be protected. You used to, you had to go to the special agent in charge of the office, many levels above you. And so that was helpful, but it was still a very limited start. And so a number of our other whistleblowers, we representative, come from the FBIA number of them got settlement agreements this year with the FBI because of our efforts there. But what they exposed things like the Richmond memo targeting Catholics or parents at school board meetings, being targeted, targeted for their views, speaking up about school closures during COVID, all of these types of things, I think in part persisted because there were not strong FBI protections and the FBI for many of our clients was just able to suspend their security clearances even and that many of whom were decorated veterans, and that'd be the basis for them being suspended from the FBI for a long time.
(50:47):
So definitely on the FBI side, there are a number of things that need to be done to strengthen those protections. We've been advocating for those for some years, and I've testified in front of the Jim Jordan's weaponization committee a couple of times about that. And additionally, the intelligence community whistleblower protections ought to be strengthened. I think again, the revelations of this year and knowing for instance, that there was a whistleblower when the FBI was targeting Trump and first starting with the FISA Warren into Carter Page and the other things that followed there, people within the intelligence community saying, Hey, we know better about some of these things and trying to come forward and having no process and no protection, highlight that even in the intelligence community, we should have whistleblower protections that allow good people to expose the truth when it needs to be exposed, not necessarily to the public if it's classified, but to Congress and other decision makers.
Jenny Beth Martin (51:40):
You mentioned a settlement with the FBI whistleblowers earlier this year. I have spoken to some of these whistleblowers who really, they are not like the IRS agents who wound up going back to work and having a job. Many of the FBI whistleblowers didn't get their jobs reinstated. They weren't able to get other jobs because even local law enforcement no longer trusted them if they weren't with the FBI and couldn't keep their job there. How could they be trusted in local law enforcement? And it really harmed their reputation when all they were trying to do was stand up for what they believe was right and try to make sure that the FBI was functioning as it was supposed to. I think that when a whistleblower is treated that way, it sends a chilling message to all other government employees that if you see something, you don't say anything. And it's a bit alarming to me, at least if they're speaking out against the Democrats we saw when they were speaking out against President Trump, they were celebrated in the media and across the country. But that same thing hasn't happened to people who spoke out against the Biden administration.
Tristan Leavitt (53:01):
And again, some of it is the media narratives, the mainstream media, what they will amplify. But again, the FBI whistleblowers were really harmed both because of the lack of FBI with support protections and because of the FBI's willingness to abuse the security clearance process. And so we have very much been trying to get that fixed. I will say those many of our clients who wanted to go back had the opportunity, I guess any of them that wanted to go back, had the opportunity as part of the settlement agreements. We concluded some of them had already been separated and didn't have a desire to, but so those settlement agreements, we are still in a process of those being implemented. But we are very hopeful that those people will have their clearances reinstated. Those that wanted to go back to the FBI will be able to go back and work and do the good work they were doing before. So we're hopeful that we're in a stage where we will see that happening. I will say having led a couple of personnel related agencies, all of government moves much more slowly than it should and that I would like. And so this has been a slow process, but we are very hopeful again that we represented that want. Some of them are in the process of going back into the FBI and we are very hopeful that that will be a rewarding thing for them because again, we need good people like that in these agencies.
(54:27):
You can't just abandon them or their agencies may need to be totally overhauled, but wherever there are good people in these agencies, we've got to be supporting them. And again, making sure that they have the proper whistleblower protections is a big part of that.
Jenny Beth Martin (54:41):
Is there anything that you think Congress needs to do to help whistleblowers further? And what about what can activists do to help you and your organization as you're supporting whistleblowers?
Tristan Leavitt (54:54):
So for Congress, again, we really need these statutory reforms. We need them to fix the FBI whistleblower process. We need them to protect the security clearance process and for intelligence community whistleblowers, I think the time has come again to strengthen those laws. Even though I understand the arguments there that when it comes to national security, we want to be very careful. But I think we've seen enough examples of that process being abused, of people who spoke out about the abuse of the intelligence community to target individuals, that we've got to have stronger protections there. So that's the key thing that we really would love to see from Congress, and I think you'll see some legislation to that effect percolating around from different groups. There is a great intelligence community whistleblower bill that I think is soon to be introduced. So those are some good things that people can speak up about, including on the activist side.
(55:46):
Beyond that, I would just say, again, recognizing the importance of these safeguards. It's so frequent that people have kind of a mindset that just goes to when they're the people that they like are suffering some consequence. It's important to know that rules of the road protect everybody, whistleblower protections. And so I can say of someone, I don't think your disclosure is as significant as you think it is, and I don't think it has the implications that you think it does. And so therefore, I don't think that behavior needs to change or agency needs to change or something else like that. However, I believe you should be protected in blowing the whistle, and I think that's the posture that a lot of people have a hard time with. It's either rah, rah, rah or no, get rid of 'em. Fire. And if they're doing their job, if they're not resisting or anything else, we want to encourage people to speak up about the problems that they see.
(56:38):
And so I think people being conscious about that is significant. Of course, we would love the support of the book. Again, truth e power.com is the website. All of those proceeds go to us. We are small, there's just four attorneys here and we're quite new and we get a lot of people reaching out to us, many more than we are able to actually help. And so we would love to be able to expand our operations and help more people like this tell their story, help identify more of these programs within government, because again, that's how you break down the deep state. That's how you drain the swamp is by finding these problems. And it's not going to be, again, by foyer requests or even by Congress blindly sending their strongly worded letters. It will be by whistleblowers coming forward and saying, here's where the problems are. I know all about them, I can tell you about it, but I've got to be protected. And for that, they need legal counsel and we are very happy to provide that free legal advice that we do. And so any support there, our website is empower oversight.org and we're very happy to do what we do and very proud to stand by these patriots that blow the whistle.
Jenny Beth Martin (57:38):
Very good. Well, Tristan, thank you so much for joining me today. I learned a lot. I hope our audience learned a lot, and we have to make sure that we go and buy the book Whistleblowers versus a Big Guy, and the proceeds from that are going to your organization so that you can help continue to support whistleblowers. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Tristan Leavitt (57:58):
Thank you for having me, Jenny Beth, it's been a pleasure.
Jenny Beth Martin (58:02):
Thanks for watching the Jenny Best show. If you enjoyed the show, go ahead and hit like and subscribe. It really helps us reach more people who care about freedom and the Constitution. You can find us on YouTube, Facebook Rumble, Instagram X in your favorite podcast platform.
Narrator (58:20):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.