by Margot Cleveland at the Federalist
Hunter Biden’s high-priced attorneys again tried to turn the president’s son into a victim by portraying IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley as a partisan leaker and a criminal — but on Monday, Shapley responded. Shapley’s counter was a devasting blow to Hunter Biden’s legal strategy and also represented a shot across the bow of the Biden-friendly Washington Post.
On Friday, Winston and Strawn attorney Abbe David Lowell dispatched a 10-page missive to Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, regarding what Lowell called the Republican House’s “obsession with attacking the Biden family.” While the letter complained of the House’s supposed abandonment of congressional protocol and rules of conduct, Hunter Biden’s attorneys’ real focus was Shapley, whom they painted as a partisan hack, not a whistleblower — and a criminal to boot.
The June 30 letter from Hunter’s attorneys strongly implied Shapley was responsible for leaking information to The Washington Post that served as the basis for an Oct. 6, 2022 article authored by Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein. The article claimed that “federal agents investigating President Biden’s son Hunter have gathered what they believe is sufficient evidence to charge him with tax crimes and a false statement related to a gun purchase…” Biden’s lawyers then challenged the House to ask the whistleblowers if they had leaked information to the Post.
Shapley didn’t wait for the House to ask, instead submitting an affidavit to the House Ways and Means Committee on Monday in which he unequivocally swore he “was not the source for the October 6, 2022, Washington Post article.” Shapley further attested that he had never “had any contact with Barrett or Stein,” the authors of the article. He also stated under oath that he “never leaked confidential taxpayer information.”
The whistleblower then expressly authorized “the Washington Post and/or journalists Devlin Barrett, Perry Stein, or any other Washington Post reporter to release any communications directly or indirectly to or from me,” agreeing “to waive any purported journalistic privilege and/or confidentiality that would have arisen had I been a source for the Washington Post.”
At the same time,…
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