A whistleblower scandal is brewing inside the Hunter Biden investigation.

A WHISTLEBLOWER SCANDAL IS BREWING INSIDE THE HUNTER BIDEN INVESTIGATION. Just last month, this newsletter covered the emergence of a whistleblower in the joint Justice Department-IRS investigation of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter. The whistleblower was a career IRS criminal supervisory special agent who, according to his lawyer, could reveal “clear conflicts of interest” in the Biden investigation as well as “examples of preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.”

At this point, there is no public hint of exactly what that means — that is, what the Justice Department actually did, or what the IRS actually did, to put a thumb on the scale in the Hunter investigation. As a preliminary step, the whistleblower was seeking protection from reprisals by the Biden administration before going public with his story. The law protects whistleblowers from retaliation by higher-ups. But after the whistleblower came forward, he was removed from the Hunter Biden case — and then the whole team he supervised was removed, too.

Now, there is a second whistleblower. This one apparently has had hands-on, close involvement, running the Hunter investigation for more than five years. On May 18, the whistleblower wrote a letter to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel and other top IRS officials to describe what has happened to him since he raised objections to the way the Hunter case was being handled.

Whistleblower 2 began the letter by saying it was unusual for him to go straight to the top of the IRS, bypassing the chain of command. He did so, he explained, “because I don’t think my concerns and/or words are being relayed to your respective offices.” In other words, he accused midlevel IRS managers of bottling up complaints of problems with the investigation. Whether those midlevel managers were doing that with or without knowledge of the top is not clear.

This is what Whistleblower 2 wrote:

As I am sure you were aware, I was removed this week from a highly sensitive case out of the [an unnamed U.S. Attorney’s Office] after nearly 5 years of work. I was not afforded the opportunity of a phone call directly from my SAC or ASAC [special agent in charge or assistant special agent in charge], even though this has been my investigation from the start. I can’t continue to explain how disappointed I am by the actions taken on behalf of our agency. … My leadership above my direct manager — who was also removed — didn’t even give me the common courtesy of a phone call, did not afford me the opportunity of understanding why this decision was made, and did not afford me an opportunity to explain my case.

So why did the IRS sack the agent handling the case and the whole team working with him? Because the IRS investigators on the case began pointing out what they thought were inappropriate actions by the Justice Department, the IRS’s partner in the Hunter Biden investigation. More from Whistleblower 2’s letter:

For the last couple years, my SSA [supervisory special agent] and I have tried to gain the attention of our senior leadership about certain issues prevalent regarding the investigation. I have asked for countless meetings with our chief and deputy chief, often to be left out on an island and not heard from. The lack of IRS-CI [IRS criminal investigation] senior leadership involvement in this investigation is deeply troubling and unacceptable. Rather than recognizing the need to ensure close engagement and full support of the investigatory team in this extraordinarily sensitive case, the response too often had been that we were isolated (even when I said on multiple occasions that I wasn’t being heard and that I thought I wasn’t able to perform my job adequately because of the actions of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and DOJ, my concerns were ignored by senior leadership). The ultimate decision to remove the investigatory team from [redacted] without actually talking with the investigatory team, in my opinion was a decision made not to side with the investigators but to side with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Department of Justice who we have been saying for some time has been acting inappropriately.

“I never thought in my career that I would have to write an email like this,” Whistleblower 2 said in closing. “But here I am.”

So how did IRS higher-ups respond? Did they thank Whistleblower 2 for bringing problems to their attention? Did they promise to look into the concerns about how the Justice Department was handling its part of the case? Did they seek more information from Whistleblower 2?

None of the above. Instead of taking the concerns seriously, the IRS bureaucracy told Whistleblower 2 to shut up and keep his concerns inside his chain of command. “You have been told several times that you need to follow your chain of command,” an IRS official wrote to Whistleblower 2. Then the official told Whistleblower 2 that he might even have violated the law by including “potential grand jury material” in the subject line of his email. He was told to “follow previously stated directives and this written directive that no information should be sent to the [director of field operations], Deputy Chief, Chief, or any other executive,” without going through lower-downs in the chain of command.

Whistleblower 2 took the grand jury remark, which appears to be entirely baseless, as a shot across the bow. The IRS official who wrote it was clearly suggesting Whistleblower 2 might actually face criminal exposure for taking his concerns to the head of the IRS.

Remember back in the mists of time, in the first Trump impeachment, when Democrats told us that whistleblowers were sacred and must, must, must be protected? That’s when a whistleblower was targeting then-President Donald Trump. Now, when a whistleblower is concerned about the Hunter Biden investigation, he is told to stay in his lane. And then he, along with several colleagues, is removed from the case. Something is going on here.

So what now? Both Whistleblower 1 and Whistleblower 2 are working to get their concerns to Congress. You will not be surprised to learn that Democrats are not particularly interested in hearing them. But Republicans control one chamber of Congress now, so it is likely those concerns will eventually become public. Then we’ll see what the story is really about. But for now, we’re seeing what the Biden administration does to career government employees who look too closely into the shady business dealings of the president’s son.