After news broke that President Biden’s son Hunter had filed a lawsuit against the IRS, IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley’s legal team issued a statement condemning the action.
Biden filed the lawsuit claiming that IRS agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler revealed confidential information about his taxes in public interviews and statements.
“This suit against the IRS is just another frivolous smear by Biden family attorneys trying to turn people’s attention away from Hunter Biden’s own legal problems and intimidate any current and future whistleblowers,” the attorneys for Shapley wrote.
“The federal judge in Delaware who oversaw the aborted plea deal shot down similar claims against the whistleblowers after they exposed the secret backroom deal between Hunter Biden and the Department of Justice,” they continued, referring to Federal District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika, who put a plea deal between Hunter Biden’s lawyers and the Department of Justice on hold after expressing her concern about the extent of immunity being offered to Hunter Biden.
“Neither IRS SSA Gary Shapley nor his attorneys have ever released any confidential taxpayer information except through whistleblower disclosures authorized by statute. Once Congress released that testimony, like every American citizen, he has a right to discuss that public information,” they asserted.
Shapley and Joseph Ziegler spoke before Congress to expose what they said was a double standard in the way the IRS and Department of Justice had handled the investigation into Hunter Biden. The whistleblowers said they were blocked from pursuing lines of questioning that had the potential of implicating Joe Biden, adding that Hunter Biden was given favorable treatment, Including warnings ahead of certain investigative actions.
“This assault on Mr. Biden’s rights involved the public disclosure of his confidential tax information during more than 20 nationally televised and non-congressionally sanctioned interviews and numerous public statements,” the lawsuit says, according to The Washington Post.
The whistleblower made “detailed allegations regarding the specific tax years under investigation, the amounts of deductions, the nature of those deductions, and allegations of liability regarding specific tax years and the amount thereof, that could only be known to them based on a review of the physical tax returns themselves,” the lawsuit says.
Related: Hunter Biden Sues IRS Over Whistleblower Leaks
Tim Pearce contributed to this article.