Republicans accused of faking Whatsapps to smear Hunter Biden

Hunter Biden’s lawyer has accused Republicans of faking documents in an attempt to smear the president’s son.

Abbe Lowell sent a scathing letter to Jason Smith, chairman of the house ways and means committee, which is investigating Mr Biden, accusing him of a campaign of misinformation.

Republican attacks against Mr Biden have intensified since he reached an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to minor tax offences but avoid jail time.

In June the committee released what it said was damning evidence of Mr Biden leveraging his father Joe’s name to pressurise a Chinese businessman over a proposed energy deal.

It released images of a WhatsApp message which Mr Biden allegedly sent to Henry Zhao in 2017, in which he said he was sitting “with my father”, then a former vice-president.

But they were bogus, Mr Lowell alleged.

“The screengrab images you posted are not real and contain a myriad of issues. In short, the images you circulated online are complete fakes.”

The profile picture of Mr Biden was taken in 2022, five years after the WhatsApp message was sent.

Mr Lowell was dismissive of testimony from whistleblowers which was released by the committee.

It included allegations from Gary Shapley, the Internal Revenue Service agent who oversaw part of the probe into Mr Biden’s tax affairs, that the investigation had been hamstrung by the department of justice.

Mr Lowell dismissed the interviews as “orchestrated recitations of mischaracterised 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”.

The lawyer accused Mr Smith of feeding “the misinformation campaign to harm our client, Hunter Biden, as a vehicle to attack his father”.

Mr Smith, however, dismissed Mr Lowell’s allegations.

“It’s little surprise that Hunter Biden’s attorneys are attempting to chill our investigation and discredit the whistleblowers who say they have already faced retaliation from the IRS and the department of justice despite statutory protections established by law.”