Hunter Biden has filed a lawsuit in a California federal court against the Internal Revenue Service over alleged “unlawful disclosures” made by a pair of whistleblowers who accused government prosecutors of mishandling their investigation into the president’s son — a claim the Justice Department has denied but nonetheless breathed fresh life into Hunter Biden’s legal tribulations.
Attorneys for Biden, 53, accused Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, both veteran IRS investigators, of waging a campaign to “to embarrass and inflict trauma on Mr. Biden” by improperly sharing his private taxpayer information in media interviews.
“During these interviews, Mr. Shapley and Mr. Ziegler provide unsubstantiated and selectively chosen allegations of nefarious and potentially criminal behavior,” wrote Chris Clark, an attorney for Biden.
The IRS “failed to take reasonable steps to prevent its personnel from unlawfully disclosing” Hunter Biden’s confidential taxpayer information in violation of the Privacy Act, Clark argued.
The nearly five-year probe into the younger Biden reached a climax in June with the announcement of a deal for him to plead guilty to a pair of misdemeanor tax charges and enter into a pretrial diversion program that would allow him to avoid prosecution on a separate felony gun charge.
That deal hit a snag under questioning from a federal judge in late July over disagreements between the parties about the scope of a non-prosecution agreement included in the diversion agreement. The judge gave both sides a month to clarify the terms of that agreement and try to resurrect the deal.
Those developments happened in the wake of troubling claims made by Shapley and Ziegler, who approached Congress in April with allegations that senior Justice Department officials blocked efforts to bring more serious charges against Hunter Biden, limited their investigative scope, and refused to grant special counsel status to the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who oversaw the case.
The Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland have denied those claims, defending U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ independence over the matter. Weiss himself wrote lawmakers in June to clarify that he had “full authority” to bring charges whenever and wherever he chose.
But those denials have done little to blunt concerns that the Justice Department offered the younger Biden a “sweetheart deal” from prosecutors, as congressional Republicans have claimed. Nearly half of Americans said they were not confident that the Justice Department has handled its probe of Hunter Biden in a fair and nonpartisan manner, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll from earlier this month.
In the course of their “media circus,” as Clark framed it, Shapley and Ziegler made statements that fell “well outside the bounds of the whistleblowers protections.”
Congressional Republicans voted in June to release the transcripts of interviews they’d conducted with the two whistleblowers. But in subsequent television and podcast interviews, the whistleblowers made statements not included in their testimony, Clark wrote — despite instruction from the committee not to share what was discussed in the interview “to individuals not designated to receive such information.”
As a result, according to the lawsuit, the IRS shirked its responsibility to protect Hunter Biden’s tax information from being made public.
“The IRS has never instructed Mr. Shapley, Mr. Ziegler, or their representatives to refrain from publicly and unlawfully disclosing Mr. Biden’s confidential tax return information, much less taken reasonable steps to prevent its personnel from unlawfully disclosing Mr. Biden’s tax return information,” Clark wrote.
Attorneys for Hunter Biden are seeking $1,000 in damages “for each unauthorized disclosure of his tax information,” a declaration that the IRS “willfully, knowingly, and/or by gross negligence, unlawfully disclosed Mr. Biden’s confidential tax return information,” and any documents in the IRS’ possession related to Hunter Biden’s tax information.