Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler filed a major defamation lawsuit on Friday against Hunter Biden's lawyers.
Both IRS officials, Shapley and Ziegler, testified to Congress that officials in President Joe Biden's Department of Justice (DOJ) gave Hunter Biden preferential treatment during an investigation into his taxes and overseas business dealings. May and June 2023. Two IRS whistleblowers, who also provided other information about Hunter Biden's businesses and laptop, are currently suing his eldest son's lawyer, Abe Lowell, in federal court. demand The lawsuit seeks damages totaling $20 million for defamatory statements that it claims caused “incredible and malicious damage.”
“It is ironic and damaging that a prominent attorney such as Mr. Lowell – in his words, 'one of the nation's leading white-collar criminal defense and trial lawyers' and 'widely regarded as the counsel of choice for individuals facing possible government investigations and prosecutions' – would choose to falsely accuse these special agents of criminal wrongdoing,” reads the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “Mr. Lowell's status and credibility in the legal community compounded the damage caused by his defamatory statements. Mr. Lowell's malicious and false accusations, including accusations that Messrs. Shapley and Ziegler 'committed felonies' and 'violated the law,' were made public to third parties, including the media, and caused severe damage to their professional and personal reputations.” (RELATED: IRS whistleblower in Hunter Biden case says IRS threatened 'criminal action' against him in retaliation)
IRS Whistleblower Defamation… by Nick Pope
The complaint against Lowell alleges that he falsely and maliciously defamed the two whistleblowers by describing them as violating grand jury confidentiality rules and the Taxpayer Protection Act, and that certain of those allegedly defamatory statements were substantially amplified in the media. Ziegler and Shapley are each seeking $10 million in damages from Lowell.
Among the whistleblower's most significant allegations were that the Biden Justice Department initially refused to expand Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss's prosecutorial authority, that the Biden transition team was informed in advance of plans to question Hunter Biden, and that Justice Department lawyers refused to work on the case with Weiss.
In June 2023, Shapley published text messages that Hunter Biden supposedly sent to a Chinese business partner in July 2017, in which his eldest son wrote: [his] Shapley also alleged that the FBI had authenticated Hunter Biden's laptop in November 2019, long before it became the subject of the New York Post report. story The laptop's contents were effectively censored by social media companies as it was believed to be part of an elaborate Russian plot to subvert the 2020 election.
The whistleblower's complaint points to Hunter Biden's recent decision to plead guilty in California to an array of federal tax charges as evidence that the whistleblower's concerns about a politicized investigation are justified.
“While the Biden investigation was largely stalled, their efforts attracted new levels of attention and led to criminal indictments, and Biden has now pleaded guilty to all criminal tax evasion charges brought against him,” the complaint states.
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