Hunter Biden Files Lawsuit Against IRS: Alleges Agents 'Embarrassed' Him and Violated His Privacy

In a legal maneuver that further intensifies the scrutiny surrounding him, Hunter Biden, the beleaguered first son of President Biden, has taken legal action against two Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblowers.

Hunter’s legal team asserts that these whistleblowers infringed upon his right to privacy and deliberately attempted to “embarrass” him by making his tax information public.

This lawsuit, launched on Monday, represents the latest twist in a saga that has captured headlines and could potentially impact President Biden’s re-election bid.

The individuals in the crosshairs of this legal action are IRS supervisory special agent Greg Shapley and another agent, Joe Ziegler.

Hunter Biden’s indictment on federal firearms charges, which alleged he lied about his drug use to purchase a firearm in 2018, looms large in the background. This case may well proceed to trial at a time when President Biden’s electoral prospects are at stake.

The essence of this lawsuit is a bid to “force compliance with federal tax and privacy laws” and halt the dissemination of what Hunter’s legal team terms “unsubstantiated allegations” and “unlawful disclosure” of his tax records.

While the lawsuit does not directly name Shapley and Ziegler, it is primarily focused on statements and congressional testimony provided by these IRS agents as they raised concerns about what they perceived as a broader cover-up within the Department of Justice’s tax fraud inquiry into Hunter Biden.

Abbe Lowell, a lawyer representing Hunter Biden, claims that these IRS agents revealed private tax information during nearly two dozen interviews and public statements.

Lowell contends, “IRS agents have targeted and sought to embarrass Mr. Biden via public statements to the media in which they and their representatives disclosed confidential information about a private citizen’s tax matters.”

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Hunter Biden’s lawsuit seeks compensation of $1,000 for each unauthorized tax disclosure, along with attorney fees and associated documents. The core assertion made by Shapley and Ziegler before the House Oversight Committee in July is that political appointees obstructed the investigation and shielded investigators from delving into financial connections between Hunter Biden and his father, the President.

Additionally, they alleged that federal prosecutors impeded inquiries into payments from a Chinese government-linked energy conglomerate to Hunter and scrutinizing emails found on his abandoned laptop that hinted at revenue-sharing arrangements with his father.

As Joe Ziegler put it in a CBS News interview, “Any time we potentially wanted to go down the road of asking questions related to the president, it was, ‘That’s going to take too much approvals, we can’t ask those questions.'”

Monday’s legal action, filed in the federal court of Washington, D.C., contends that sharing Hunter Biden’s personal tax information did not fall within the purview of whistleblower protections.

This lawsuit materialized approximately three months after Hunter Biden entered into a plea deal with federal authorities. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors related to his failure to pay over $100,000 in taxes for the years 2017 and 2018. The agreement also included the dismissal of a felony charge related to firearm possession while addicted to crack cocaine.

However, this probation-based deal, which came after a five-year investigation and drew Republican criticism as a “sweetheart deal,” unraveled in a July 26 hearing.

Hunter’s legal team learned that prosecutors were still considering additional charges linked to his overseas business dealings and financial records, prompting the judge’s concern about the agreement’s structure. Consequently, U.S. Attorney David Weiss withdrew the charges in Delaware, and Attorney General Merrick Garland granted him special counsel status on August 11.

Shapley’s legal team issued a statement in response to the lawsuit, characterizing it as a baseless smear campaign. They asserted, “This suit against the IRS is just another frivolous smear by Biden family attorneys trying to turn people’s attention away from Hunter Biden’s own legal problems and intimidate any current and future whistleblowers.”

This lawsuit has absolutely no impact on either Hunter Biden’s nor President Biden’s legal troubles. While this may be smoke and mirrors, the broader investigation into his financial activities and potential ties to his father remains ongoing.

President Biden maintains his innocence and denies any wrongdoing in his son’s international lobbying affairs, which were initially exposed by The New York Post in a significant 2020 exposé that was subsequently hushed by big tech prior to the 2020 election.

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