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Tristan Leavitt Profile picture
@tristanleavitt
May 17 • 17 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
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🚨🚨 Today IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler have taken the extraordinary step of filing a motion to intervene in Hunter Biden's lawsuit against the IRS in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Read why below... 🧵 courtlistener.com/docket/6780378…
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They filed it so they can do what the IRS has failed to: make clear that their 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.
Hunter Biden first filed his lawsuit against the IRS last September after Congress called out his lobbying of his father's Administration to criminally charge the IRS whistleblowers (instead of himself!). waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/upl…
Normally a lawsuit like this would be defended by DOJ's Federal Programs Branch, which I worked with when I was general counsel for the @USMSPB. But instead, DOJ assigned two attorneys from the Tax Division--one of the very offices Shapley and Ziegler blew the whistle on.
When the IRS finally responded in Jan. 2024 to Hunter Biden's lawsuit, it failed to move to dismiss the whole lawsuit. We contacted DOJ and explained the taxpayer secrecy laws' whistleblower provision at 26 USC § 6103(f)(5) and the congressional process.

When Hunter Biden filed an amended complaint after that, DOJ had another bite at the apple. But once again, their February 27 court filing failed to even *reference* the whistleblower protections, much less cite why that is a basis for dismissing the whole lawsuit altogether.Image
Of course, DOJ's client here is the IRS--the same agency that took the whistleblowers off the Hunter Biden case, imposed illegal gag orders on them, and tried to make it look in Hunter's criminal prosecution like the whistleblowers are under investigation.
There are clear conflicts here, and on April 4 we wrote a 20-page letter to Attorney General Garland laying out our concerns.
Only then did DOJ finally drop a footnote in a filing last Friday that they don't believe the IRS whistleblowers broke the law. Yet DOJ is still not moving to dismiss Hunter Biden's case in its entirety, despite several good-faith bases for doing so.
So we're asking to allow the whistleblowers to join the lawsuit and represent their own interests.

The filings consist of a 20-page Motion to Intervene, a Motion to Dismiss, and a 36-page memo in support of the Motion to Dismiss. You can find them here: empowr.us/irs-whistleblo…
The memo in support also has as an exhibit a 5-page chart that shows exactly where each "disclosure" Hunter Biden alleges Shapley and Ziegler made in the media had already been lawfully released by @WaysandMeansGOP, and was thus no longer covered by Section 6103 confidentiality. Image
In just the first 8 days after the @WaysandMeansGOP statutory release on June 22, 2023, the information was mentioned 3,956 times in 41 countries, including all 50 states. It clearly became part of the public domain.Image
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Below are some highlights from the Motion to Intervene:

➡️ p. 1: Clear conflict between the interests of Hunter Biden, the IRS whistleblowers, and the governmental entities on which they blew the whistle Image
➡️ pp. 2-3: Shapley and Ziegler deserve the opportunity to defend their own interests, not leave it to the IRS and the Tax Division they blew the whistle on Image
➡️ pp. 11-14: Shapley and Ziegler have concrete interests in the lawsuit's outcome, like their careers, their reputations, and fending off other consequences like retaliatory criminal prosecution Image
➡️ pp. 14-15: While the IRS has some interests in common with the whistleblowers, so too may Hunter Biden if the lawsuit is not dismissed Image
➡️ pp. 16-17: Shapley and Ziegler deserve to have a voice and their own advocates Image
.@CBSNews: IRS whistleblowers ask judge to dismiss Hunter Biden's lawsuit against the tax agency
cbsnews.com/news/irs-whist…

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More from @tristanleavitt

Tristan Leavitt Profile picture
Jun 12
"The crimes found by the jury were committed on October 12, 2018, and were fully known to law enforcement within less than two weeks when the gun was recovered after the defendant’s then-girlfriend — the wife of his late brother, whom he’d also gotten hooked on crack — took the Colt Cobra .38, which he’d illegally purchased while lying on the required federal form, and recklessly discarded it in a trash bin near a school, out of fear that in his drug-addled state he’d hurt himself or others. If the defendant’s name had been Robert Hunter Smith, any normal federal prosecutor would have prosecuted him for these crimes by early 2019, if not sooner — and there’d have been no concerns about the Secret Service mysteriously intervening to make the damning evidence disappear."
"The defendant was named Robert Hunter Biden and the federal prosecutor was the abnormally political David Weiss, so the prosecution took six years — and if Weiss and the Biden Justice Department had had their way, it wouldn’t have happened at all."
"For over two years, Weiss had had Hunter Biden dead-to-rights on the gun case and on equally overwhelming evidence of tax offenses, yet he had taken no action. Indeed, as whistleblower agents have detailed, Weiss and his subordinates thwarted the efforts of investigators to move aggressively on the cases."
Read 6 tweets
Tristan Leavitt Profile picture
Jun 6
🚨🚨 These records the FBI produced to @JudicialWatch showing the FBI's coordination with House Democrats to smear our clients are a HUGE deal: .

When Marcus Allen, @RealStevefriend, @GOBactual and I testified before @JudiciaryGOP's @Weaponization on May 18, 2023, we strongly suspected the FBI or DOJ had coordinated with Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.

That's why @EMPOWR_us filed this FOIA request with DOJ the day of that hearing for DOJ communications with one staffer for Ranking Member Nadler: .

It looks like the problem was worse than we thought.

Let's walk through the timeline of how this played out... 🧵judicialwatch.org/documents/jw-v…
empowr.us/wp-content/upl…
Throughout February 2023, @JudiciaryGOP conducted bipartisan transcribed interviews of several FBI whistleblowers as part of @Weaponization’s investigation into the politicization of the FBI.

Rather than focusing on the substance of the whistleblowers’ disclosures, Judiciary Democrats spent most of those interviews talking about tweets, press interviews, or other First Amendment activity the whistleblowers had engaged in.

It seems doubtful that Democratic staff spent hundreds of hours poring over podcast interviews with @kyleseraphin to find the material, raising the question of where they obtained it.
@JudicialWatch @RealStevefriend @GOBactual @JudiciaryGOP @Weaponization Judiciary Republicans would eventually release a number of portions of those transcripts on May 18, after giving the witnesses the opportunity to review the transcripts for accuracy.
judiciary.house.gov/media/press-re…
Read 20 tweets
Tristan Leavitt Profile picture
May 22
“‘The defendant’s laptop is real (it will be introduced as a trial exhibit) and it contains significant evidence of the defendant’s guilt’… Hines underscored that the laptop data…is ‘self-authenticating’ and will be ‘introduced with corroborating evidence at trial.’”
This is a doozy of a filing. "[D]efense counsel demonstrates...despite claiming they do, they actually have no evidence to give them 'reasons to believe that data has been altered and compromised before investigators obtained the electronic material." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
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Read 8 tweets
Tristan Leavitt Profile picture
May 22
“In 2021, AUSA Leslie Wolf told investigators they could not pursue Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris as a witness based on information she received from the CIA. Investigators were never provided the same information that AUSA Wolf received.” gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/chairman-smith…
See SSA Gary Shapley’s affidavit about this here. gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/upl…
Important to note SSA Shapley's affidavit doesn't say the CIA blocked prosecutors from using Kevin Morris as a witness as trial. Rather, based on what the CIA shared in its classified briefing, AUSA Wolf simply told the team they could "no longer pursue [Morris] as a witness." Image
Read 5 tweets
Tristan Leavitt Profile picture
May 14
🚨🚨 BREAKING: This morning the legal team of IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley referred to @JusticeOIG and DOJ OPR the conduct of Special Counsel David Weiss for attacking the IRS whistleblowers' reputation by leading the world to believe they were under investigation.🧵
Weiss's March 11 filing in the CA criminal case against Hunter Biden opened with an attack on the IRS whistleblowers, comparing their conduct with that of Hunter Biden's. (In a subsequent hearing, Weiss's office referred to the whistleblowers as "hyenas, baying at the moon.") Image
This animus had a direct impact. Later in the March 11 filing, Weiss indicated that an attached exhibit, filed under seal, described the "responsible steps" "the IRS has taken" "to address Shapley and Ziegler's conduct." The reference was followed by a heavily redacted paragraph. Image
Read 13 tweets
Tristan Leavitt Profile picture
May 14
🚨 This morning @JusticeOIG released a memo citing concerns about DOJ's compliance with whistleblower protections for employees with a security clearance. The review was in part prompted by the whistleblower complaint of @EMPOWR_us's client, Marcus Allen. oig.justice.gov/news/doj-oig-r…
@JusticeOIG @EMPOWR_us Mr. Allen is an employee of the @FBI. According to the DOJ OIG report, the FBI waits on average 17.5 months between suspending an employee's security clearance and making a final decision on whether to revoke it or reinstate it. (That doesn't count any time spent appealing.) Image
@JusticeOIG @EMPOWR_us @FBI In Mr. Allen's case, 16 months elapsed from suspension to proposed revocation. He was without pay that entire time.

The FBI's decision to revoke came not long before the @JudiciaryGOP Weaponization Subcommittee held a hearing on Mr. Allen's case. judiciary.house.gov/committee-acti…
Read 4 tweets

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