IRS’s Gary Shapley’s lawyers fire back at Hunter Biden team

An IRS whistleblower’s legal team has torn into Hunter Biden’s high-priced lawyers, accusing reps for the first son of peddling “false and defamatory statements.”

Supervisory agent Gary Shapley’s lawyers sent a letter Monday to two Washington Post reporters, urging them to publicly confirm Shapley was not their source for an October 2022 article about how federal investigators believed they had the goods on Hunter, now 53.

“Biden family attorneys have falsely accused SSA Shapley of illegally leaking to you,” read the letter to Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein. “Shapley was not a source for you on that story, or any other story for that matter.”

The Washington Post story, published online Oct. 6, 2022, detailed how federal investigators felt they had garnered sufficient evidence to charge Hunter Biden for tax crimes and for lying on a federal firearm purchase form.

The piece did not specify whether the tax crimes would be charged as felonies or the misdemeanors to which the first son ultimately plans to plead guilty.

“Mr. Biden’s lawyers … are not entitled to make false and defamatory statements about SSA Shapley,” read the letter from Tristan Leavitt and Jason Foster of nonprofit public accountability group Empower Oversight and whistleblower attorney Mark Lytle.

“Nor is it appropriate for them to release statements full of careful insinuations and speculation that keep them just a hair’s breadth from a defamation lawsuit, relying on the news media to spread a false narrative without correcting the public record.”

Shapley’s lawyers added that Barrett and Stein were being formally released from any “pledge of confidentiality” they may have had with Shapley to corroborate his claims.

“You are now free to correct Mr. Biden’s attorneys and clear SSA Shapley’s good name of these false and retaliatory charges,” the letter spelled out.

When contacted by The Post for a response to the letter, a Washington Post spokesperson said: “We don’t comment on our sourcing.”

Shapley was one of two IRS whistleblowers who came forward to Congress with allegations of favoritism in the Hunter Biden probe.

The other agent, a subordinate of Shapley, has chosen to remain anonymous.

At the time, Hunter Biden attorney Chris Clark suggested Shapley had “committed a crime” by revealing information about the investigation.

“It is a felony for an IRS agent to improperly disclose information about an ongoing tax investigation,” Clark told NBC News. “The IRS has incredible power, and abusing that power by targeting, embarrassing, or disclosing information about a private citizen’s tax matters undermines Americans’ faith in the federal government. Unfortunately, that is what has happened and is happening here in an attempt to harm my client.”

Shapley’s lawyers also pointed to Clark’s public statement accusing Shapley of bias following the release June 22 of his testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee.

“Biased and politically motivated, selective leaks have plagued this matter for years. They are not only irresponsible, they are illegal. A close examination of the document released publicly yesterday by a very biased individual raises serious questions over whether it is what he claims it to be. It is dangerously misleading to make any conclusions or inferences based on this document,” Clark told Fox News at the time.

The Shapley lawyers stressed that the Ways and Means Committee — not Shapley — voted to make a transcript of the whistleblowers’ testimony public.

Along with the letter to the two Washington Post reporters, Shapley’s lawyers released a sworn affidavit from their client to the Ways and Means Committee attesting that he has “never leaked confidential taxpayer information.”

“I was not the source for the October 6, 2022 Washington Post article, nor have I ever had any contact with Barrett or Stein,” the affidavit said.

In their testimonies, Shapley and his fellow whistleblower alleged that there was heavy interference from the Justice Department in Delaware US Attorney David Weiss’ probe of the first son.

Among other claims, the investigators said, Weiss was thwarted in his bid to bring forward additional tax charges against Hunter Biden in both Southern California and in Washington, DC.

Weiss, a Trump appointee, has since stated publicly that he had “ultimate authority” in his probe, though he added in a June 30 letter to the House Judiciary Committee that “my charging authority is geographically limited to my home district” and noted that “If venue for a case lies elsewhere, common Departmental practice is to contact the United States Attorney’s Office for the district in question and determine whether it wants to partner on the case.”

Shapley also alleged in his testimony that Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf discouraged federal investigators from lines of questioning related to Joe Biden.

Hunter Biden has reached a deal with Weiss’ office to plead guilty to misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay his federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018, according to court documents.

As part of the deal, the first son will enter a pretrial diversion agreement for a felony charge over his possession of a firearm while addicted to illicit drugs.

Hunter Biden is due to appear in Wilmington, Del., federal court July 26.

Clark did not immediately respond to a request for comment.