The way the American legal system is weighted against the little guy is exemplified by the $20 million defamation action brought Friday night by IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler against Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell.
For one thing, a lawsuit like this typically will cost upwards of $1 million. For another, Lowell is one of the most feared lawyers in the country and few of his fellow legal eagles are keen to take him on.
The good news is that, after several false starts, whistleblower advocacy group Empower Oversight managed to secure the services of Las Vegas defamation lawyer Mitchell Langberg, who has such clients as billionaire Steve Wynn.
Then there is the fact the legal industry has come to be dominated by aggressively partisan Democratic firms that think nothing of funding lawfare against Donald Trump and supporters or providing pro bono legal advice to people who are politically useful to Democrats or bowing to pressure from the Democratic Party to jettison politically inconvenient partners. Also, there is no shortage of left-wing billionaires willing to bankroll gratuitous lawsuits, like LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who funded the E. Jean Carroll case against Trump.
Those deep pockets don’t exist for conservatives or anyone who doesn’t benefit Democrats.
So even though Shapley and Ziegler’s lawsuit had a good chance of success, it almost didn’t get off the ground because they earn modest public servant salaries and have to rely on donors.
“The ugly truth is that whistleblowers usually face well-funded retaliatory smear campaigns,” says Empower founder Jason Foster, former chief investigative counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“That’s just wrong, so we set up a new crowdfunding effort at Defendwhistleblowers.com [to] level the playing field. With the public’s help, we plan to push back hard so retaliators will think twice next time before hurling false accusations.”
Shapley and Ziegler stepped out of the shadows last year to inform Congress of how the Justice Department obstructed and slow-walked the criminal investigation of the first son for five years. Their bombshell testimony included allegations that prosecutors tipped off Hunter’s lawyers about pending search warrants, allowed the statute of limitations to lapse on the most serious charges, withheld evidence from line investigators and prohibited them from mentioning Joe Biden — or his nickname “The Big Guy” — during witness interviews.
As a reward, their careers have been destroyed, IRS leadership has abandoned them, and their reputations suffered “incredible and malicious harm” when Lowell accused them of illegally leaking Hunter’s private tax information.
They claim Lowell acted with “clear malice” by retaliating against their lawful whistleblower disclosures with false and defamatory statements to the media.
“As whistleblowers, Shapley and Ziegler acted with honor and integrity in exposing conflicts of interest, preferential treatment, and political motivations that they reasonably believed were interfering with the criminal tax investigation of Hunter Biden,” says their lawsuit filed in DC District Court.
The sweetheart plea deal between Hunter and Delaware US Attorney David Weiss fell apart after Shapley and Ziegler went public with their concerns. Their concerns were validated when Hunter pleaded guilty in California this month to all felony tax crimes brought against him.
The disclosures the honest IRS investigators made to Congress form an invaluable record of wrongdoing by bad actors within the federal government. They ensured that Hunter did not get off scot-free and provided evidence to pursue others in the future.
“Truth matters,” says Shapley. “It mattered when I did my duty by blowing the whistle last year. It mattered when justice was served last week. It matters now when I am forced to defend my reputation against false accusations that I violated the law. I am not just doing this for myself. I am doing it for all whistleblowers who might face public attacks.”
Anti-Trump comic book
In a brazen attempt to brainwash young voters in Pennsylvania, an anti-Trump comic book full of lies about the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot is being sent to every public high school and library in the crucial swing state on the eve of the presidential election.
Copies of the first issue of “1/6: A Graphic Novel” will be mailed out this week, according to the Philly Voice, which describes it as “speculative fiction in the vein of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’”
The comic, funded by the left-wing Kettering Foundation, is set in an alternative-universe Washington, DC, in which Trump’s “insurrection” was successful, and authoritarians have taken over the country and begin executing journalists.
“It’s very evident to me, the forces that led to that insurrection … the white supremacy, disinformation — those things are all very still much with us,” Alan Jenkins, the Harvard Law professor who cooked up the political dirty trick, told the Philadelphia Inquirer.
If this isn’t election interference, I don’t know what is. There ought to be some sort of limit on naked political propaganda being forced on students before an election.