As RedState reported, Hunter Biden is suing the IRS, charging that whistleblower disclosures violated his right to privacy.
The lawsuit alleges that Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler sought to “publicly smear” the president’s son by releasing information about his taxes to congressional investigators. According to Hunter Biden’s legal team, that all adds up to a violation of his “privacy rights.”
Now, Hunter Biden has sued his father’s administration, claiming that the IRS agents have “targeted and sought to embarrass ” him. The suit particularly attacks IRS agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, the two whistleblowers who came forward to Congress to explain the slow-walking and the problems they saw with the handling of the case. Biden argues that the whistleblowers engaged in a campaign to “publicly smear him.”
The complaint argues that those appearances were outside of their whistleblower claims to Congress and that those disclosures were wrongful conduct and not permitted.
The filing goes on to allege that the whistleblowers released information that Congress itself had not released. That centers on $2.2 million in unpaid taxes and fraud accusations that Hunter Biden claimed prostitutes and sex club memberships on his returns.
Now, a lawyer representing Shapley is firing back, slamming the lawsuit as a “frivolous smear.”
“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 attorneys asserted.
The lawsuit, Shapley’s legal team claimed, 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.”
It would seem that the whistleblowers are on solid ground. Both of them went through the proper channels in order to speak to Congress and share the information they had. Hunter Biden’s legal team has also shown a history of trying to distract from its own issues by preemptively going on offense. I doubt the whistleblowers will be intimidated by this move, and I’d be surprised if the lawsuit amounts to anything.
