By Andrew Duehren

President Donald Trump has picked Gary Shapley, an Internal Revenue Service agent who has said the investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes was not aggressive enough, to temporarily lead the tax collector.

Shapley’s claims that the Justice Department slow-walked the tax investigation into Hunter Biden were central to House Republicans’ attempted impeachment of his father, President Joe Biden. As acting commissioner, Shapley will succeed Melanie Krause, who decided to step down after the Trump administration pushed the IRS to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement deport immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

Shapley, whom the Treasury Department named a senior adviser last month, will take over the IRS at a moment of extraordinary turmoil. Roughly a third of its 100,000-person workforce is already on its way out the door, with many of the agency’s senior leaders quitting or being forced out in recent weeks. Shapley will be the fourth person to lead the IRS this year.

The possibility of Shapley leading the IRS has in recent days unnerved some IRS employees, who worry about the historically neutral tax collector’s enlistment in political projects such as immigration enforcement. Trump said Tuesday that Harvard University should lose its tax-exempt status after rejecting his administration’s demands to change its hiring, admissions practices and curriculum.

In an interview on Fox Business last month about his earlier promotion to the Treasury Department,...

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