A lawyer for Hunter Biden blasted two IRS whistleblowers who claimed there was political interference in the investigation into the president’s son in a scathing letter to the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday.
Biden attorney Abbe Lowell slammed Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.), alleging that the committee’s decision to release the testimony of the two IRS agents last week was “an obvious ploy to feed the misinformation campaign to harm our client, Hunter Biden, as a vehicle to attack his father,” according to the letter obtained by Axios.
Gary Shapley, an IRS supervisory special agent, claimed in an interview with the House Ways and Means Committee that Biden received “preferential treatment” and that the Justice Department “slow-walked” its investigation into the president’s son.
Two days before the committee released the transcripts, Biden agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor offenses for failing to pay income taxes in 2017 and 2018, in addition to entering into a pretrial diversion agreement on a separate charge of unlawful possession of a firearm while addicted to a controlled substance.
Lowell criticized Smith in Friday’s letter for improperly releasing tax and investigation information and disseminating “incomplete half-truths, distortions, and totally unnecessary detail” about Biden.
“It is no secret these interviews were orchestrated recitations of mischaracterized and incomplete ‘facts’ by disgruntled agents who believed they knew better than the federal prosecutors who had all the evidence as they conducted their five-year investigation of Mr. Biden,” Lowell said.
In the wake of the accusations by the IRS whistleblowers, Attorney General Merrick Garland has maintained that the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney overseeing the case, David Weiss, had full authority to decide what charges to bring against the president’s son.
After Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) floated the idea of an impeachment inquiry into Garland, the White House slammed House Republicans, suggesting that they were “desperate to distract” from their economic agenda.
Smith, alongside House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), requested interviews with more than a dozen individuals involved in the Biden investigation on Thursday.