by John Solomon at justthenews.com
The IRS whistleblower at the center of the Hunter Biden scandal on Wednesday turned the tables on the presidential son’s defense lawyers, filing an official statement to Congress denying claims he leaked protected tax information and suggesting the defense team’s allegations were “another attack in retaliation” for his decision to blow the whistle.
IRS Supervisory Criminal Investigative Agent Gary Shapley sent the statement to House and Senate committees, saying he was so confident he hadn’t leaked that he would release the Washington Post and reporters Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein to make public any evidence it has to back up Democrat and defense team claims he may have been the source of an October 2022 story about agents’ concerns about conduct in the case.
“I was not the source for the October 6, 2022 Washington Post article, nor have I ever had any contact with Barrett or Stein,” Shapley’s statement said. “Because I am so confident of this fact, I hereby authorize 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.
“In this regard , I am willing to waive any purported journalistic privilege and/confidentiality that would have arisen had I been a source for the Washington Post. I have never leaked confidential taxpayer information,” his statement added.
You can read that letter here.
The unsolicited letter came just days after Hunter Biden lawyer Abbe Lowell accused Shapley and another whistleblower of being “disgruntled” and making “false allegations” in their interviews with Congress and insinuated the whistleblowers could be behind the October 2022 Washington Post article.
“It is a tried-and-true tactic of aggrieved agents, who believe they know better than experienced prosecutors and disagree with those prosecutors timing or conclusions, to seek to influence an outcome of an investigation and pressure prosecutors to charge by leaking to the media. Happens all the time,” Lowell wrote.