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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
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
Tristan Leavitt Profile picture
May 2
This is a big one to watch... @EMPOWR_us "is asking a federal court to unseal documents related to the Justice Department’s subpoenas of the personal phone and email records of members of Congress and during the Trump-Russia investigation." foxnews.com/politics/watch…
@EMPOWR_us Those subpoenas included my partner, @EMPOWR_us's founder Jason Foster. At the time of the DOJ subpoenas, he was the chief investigative counsel to our former boss, @ChuckGrassley, leading oversight of the Trump-Russia investigation. So DOJ had *zero* business seeking his coms.
@EMPOWR_us @ChuckGrassley There is a reason the U.S. Constitution creates a separation of powers between the branches, with various checks and balances. If DOJ didn't disclose to the court that the individuals whose communication records it was seeking were for congressional staff, that's a huge deal.
Read 16 tweets
Tristan Leavitt Profile picture
Apr 1
🧵: @EMPOWR_us has submitted a FOIA request to the FBI for more information about sexual misconduct and other inappropriate behavior by Michael Christman, head of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division.
The FBI describes CJIS as a "high-tech hub in the hills of West Virginia," and it houses programs like the National Crime Information Center, National Instant Criminal Background Check System, Bioterrorism Risk Assessment Group, and more. fbi.gov/services/cjis
The services CJIS provides are essential to every police department and law enforcement agency in the U.S. Yet CJIS is in dire need of oversight. We recently filed a whistleblower complaint on behalf of Monica Shillingburg, but the problems there go well beyond her case.
Read 9 tweets
Tristan Leavitt Profile picture
Mar 27
Congress should have a strong interest in defending the tax whistleblower provision *it created* at 26 USC 6103(f)(5) ("Disclosure by whistleblower"), which allows those with access to confidential taxpayer information to blow the whistle to @WaysandMeansGOP or @SenateFinance.
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@WaysandMeansGOP @SenateFinance The provision was added by the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998. Why was it introduced? "The [Senate Finance] Committee believes that it is appropriate to have the opportunity to receive tax return information directly from whistleblowers." congress.gov/105/crpt/srpt1…
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@WaysandMeansGOP @SenateFinance In conference, the provision got expanded. The Senate version would only have allowed disclosures about an incident of IRS employee or taxpayer abuse. The final version gave the current scope of "possible misconduct, maladministration, or taxpayer abuse." congress.gov/105/crpt/hrpt5…

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Read 6 tweets
Tristan Leavitt Profile picture
Mar 27
Today at 1 pm PT there is a hearing on Hunter Biden's various pre-trial motions to dismiss.

His attorneys have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the government in an effort to get the charges dropped. On February 20 they filed *8* motions to dismiss on various grounds.

(They also filed a "motion to strike surplusage" because they didn't like that the indictment referenced "Mr. Biden's 'extravagant lifestyle' and other gratuitous descriptors," as they put it.)

Special Counsel Weiss's office has done a good job knocking down most of Abbe Lowell's silly arguments. But there is one area where Weiss's interests are aligned with Hunter Biden's: not being happy about IRS Special Agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler blowing the whistle to Congress. So we'll be watching to see if that manifests itself in today's hearing.

It's already outrageous that after the IRS whistleblowers highlighted how Weiss and his office had allowed political pressures to infect their decisionmaking, Weiss was still appointed Special Counsel. There is no way he can impartially examine the misconduct OF HIMSELF AND HIS OWN OFFICE.

Now, Weiss and his team may be tempted to use today's hearing for CYA on that front, but it would be *entirely* inappropriate for Weiss's office to be opining to Hunter Biden's lawyers or Judge Scarsi on the propriety of the IRS agents blowing the whistle. Weiss has way too much personal skin in the game.
Meanwhile, in another case dealing with some of the same issues...
🚨 UPDATE: All eight motions to dismiss were denied.

It’s clear from reading Judge Mark Scarsi’s order he was not impressed…
Read 9 tweets

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