WASHINGTON – The IRS whistleblowers who revealed the preferential treatment given to Hunter Biden as the president’s son are still fighting to have their voices heard in Biden’s lawsuit against the IRS, which falsely accuses Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler of violating tax secrecy laws. Despite the obviously meritless basis for the frivolous suit against the IRS, the IRS refused to file a motion to dismiss the case entirely and even opposes the IRS whistleblowers’ effort to intervene and ask for dismissal.
In a new filing yesterday, the whistleblowers’ attorneys wrote:
[I]nstead of taking the position any litigant on the defense side of a civil lawsuit would take, the IRS opposes dismissal and purportedly wants “to wait for a fully developed factual record to present its defenses.” In other words, the IRS wants the parties to engage in written discovery and depositions, even if unnecessary to resolve this case in its favor. Thus, it is the IRS’s opposition to intervention—not the proposed intervenors attempt to have it dismissed entirely as a matter of law—that threatens to unnecessarily delay and inject irrelevant issues into this case by oddly inviting needless discovery that defendants would normally seek to avoid. [citations omitted]
The initial motion to intervene and support for the motion to dismiss were filed May 17, to make clear that the whistleblowers’ protected disclosures were legal, pursuant to whistleblower protection laws, and critical to safeguarding the principle of equal treatment under the law regardless of party or familial relationship.
The whistleblowers’ reply comes after briefs filed by Hunter Biden and the IRS against the whistleblowers’ motion to intervene.
The latest filing highlights the excessive rhetoric from Hunter Biden attorneys who are treating the case more like a political game, as well as the curious IRS willingness to allow the case against itself to continue with no way for the whistleblowers to defend their actions from further retaliation and their reputations from further attack by Biden’s attorneys. As the filing explains:
Hunter Biden argues that the agents’ “conduct makes it clear that they intend to turn this lawsuit into a circus, starring themselves.” And the IRS argues permissive intervention will cause “unnecessary delay” and allow Shapley and Ziegler “to inject irrelevant issues into this case.” This Court should reject both arguments.
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Indeed, it is not Shapley or Ziegler who “intend to turn this lawsuit into a circus, starring themselves.” It is Hunter Biden who is the ringmaster of this lawsuit, which may very well be a circus—but the show need not go on if Shapley and Ziegler can intervene and move for dismissal, because even the allegations as pled are not violations of the tax secrecy statute. No discovery is necessary if the court can consider and grant intervenors’ motion to dismiss now, because all the disclosures complained of were authorized as a matter of law (citations omitted).
For the whistleblowers’ joint op-ed explaining their motion to intervene click here.