IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley’s legal team issued a statement Monday in reaction to Hunter Biden filing a federal lawsuit against the IRS.
The younger Biden filed the lawsuit on Monday, alleging that Shapley and another IRS agent, Joseph Ziegler, have “targeted and sought to embarrass Mr. Biden via public statements to the media in which they and their representatives disclosed confidential information about a private citizen’s tax matters,” according to Just the News.
Both Shapley and Ziegler publicly came forward earlier this summer as whistleblowers in the Department of Justice’s probe into the president’s son, testifying in front of the House Oversight Committee.
In a statement, Shapley’s legal team says the president’s son’s lawsuit 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 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,” Shapley’s team added. “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.”
The tax investigation into Hunter Biden originally began in 2018 and was expected to conclude earlier this year in July, as the president’s son was planning to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts related to tax evasion and receive a probationary sentence. Additionally, a separate felony gun charge against Biden would have been dropped in a two-year agreement if he stayed out of trouble.
However, Biden’s plea deal fell apart after a federal court judge in Delaware expressed concerns about the terms and, as a result, prosecutors charged Biden with three felony counts related to the gun last week.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Photo “Gary Shapley” by House Oversight Committee.
