On Thursday, DOJ prosecutors rejected an offer from the president’s son that would have involved him accepting guilt for the nine tax charges he is facing while avoiding admitting to the underlying allegations in his indictment. Shapley, who had felt the case on Biden was being slowed down by his higher-ups, said he and fellow IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler came forward not to ensure the president’s son faces charges but because the DOJ was offering “preferential treatment and political interference” in the case.

“And this is a little bit of an indication, but it’s really not why we came forward, and now we’re more focused on how are we going to hold DOJ accountable for the things that they’ve actually proved themselves that we were right in the way that they were handling this case,” Shapley said on Fox News’s The Story with Martha MacCallum. “And hopefully there’ll be some mechanisms to do so.”

Shapley said it became apparent in early 2020 that the investigation into Biden kept getting pushed back, as every time they got close to taking a step forward with the case, the investigators would get pushed back “at every single step we took.” He added that he took the issue internally to IRS senior leadership, who ignored him, prompting him to go to Congress.

The whistleblower contended that the steps the Justice Department has taken in this case are proof it was not handled correctly in the first place and that it should not have taken him and Ziegler to “ruin our careers” to tell the truth to the public.

Biden’s legal team surprised prosecutors on Thursday morning by entering what is known as an Alford plea, which involves a defendant admitting there is enough evidence in a case for prosecutors to secure a guilty conviction, but it allows the defendant to avoid admitting to any allegations.

For Biden, his Alford plea would allow him to avoid admitting in court that he made millions of dollars from foreign business dealings and spent the income on frivolous purchases while neglecting his taxes. However, this plea deal was rejected by special counsel David Weiss and Justice Department prosecutors. As of Thursday afternoon, it was unclear how Biden and his defense attorneys would respond to Weiss’s unwillingness to accept the first son’s plea terms.

The offered plea was made shortly before jury selection was slated to begin Thursday in Los Angeles in what would have been the second criminal trial against the president’s son this year.