The former US dressage Olympian charged with shooting an equestrienne on his sprawling New Jersey farm had been accused of child abuse by the victim — and was quizzed by state investigators just “moments” before the alleged run-in, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Michael Barisone, 54, allegedly pumped two bullets into fellow rider Lauren Kanarek’s chest on his 53-acre Morris County farm on Aug. 7, leaving her in grave condition, officials have said.

Barisone was ordered held in his initial court appearance on Wednesday, after which his lawyer claimed that all is not as it seems in the alleged assault, which also left Kanarek’s fiancé with an arm injury.

“The alleged victim is not a victim. She’s a villain, and she is known as a grifter in the community,” Barisone attorney Jeffrey Simms told reporters shortly after his client was ordered held in custody. “They started a fraudulent DYFS investigation into them.”

DYFS, the Garden State’s Division of Youth and Family Services, is now known as the Division of Child Protection and Permanency, or DCP&P.

Simms said that the couple, who had been living on Barisone’s property through his attempts to evict them, retaliated by calling DCP&P to falsely claim that Barisone was abusive to his fiancée’s kids.

Asked what marked the breaking point in the long-running feud, Simms said, “If there was, this incident followed almost directly the investigator coming from DCP&P, from child services, to say, ‘You have been doing this, this and that to her children.'”

Barisone’s run-in with Kanarek occurred “moments” after that interview, said Simms.

Kanarek wrote on social media in the days before the shooting that she feared for her life after being told to “sleep with one eye open,” but the posts did not identify her assailant by name.

Barisone, who has become a prominent dressage trainer in the years since competing in the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, is charged with attempted murder and weapons possession.