Hunter Biden has sued the IRS, arguing that the government agency unlawfully released his private tax information.
The son of the president is also alleging that the tax agency failed to safeguard his private records.
The younger Mr Biden is seeking all the files linked to the disclosure of tax information, as well as $1,000 for every improper disclosure, and legal fees, in addition to other requests.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington DC. It doesn’t name the two IRS whistleblowers as defendants, but it’s focused on information shared by the agents – Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler – as well as their lawyers in testimony to Congress, interviews, and public statements.
“Despite clear warnings from Congress that they were prohibited from disclosing the contents of their testimony to the public in another forum, Mr Shapley and Mr Ziegler’s testimony only emboldened their media campaign against Mr Biden,” the legal filing notes.
Since their House testimony in July, the agents “have become regular guests on national media outlets and have made new allegations and public statements regarding Mr Biden’s confidential tax return information that were not previously included in their transcripts” before that committee, according to the filing.
“The lawsuit is about the decision by IRS employees, their representatives, and others to disregard their obligations and repeatedly and intentionally publicly disclose and disseminate Mr Biden’s protected tax return information outside the exceptions for making disclosures in the law,” the filing adds.
The agents’ “whistleblower” status “cannot and does not shield them from their wrongful conduct in making unauthorized public disclosures that are not permitted by the whistleblower process,” according to attorneys for Mr Biden.
The legal filing claims that Mr Shapley and Mr Ziegler did more than verify the investigation into Mr Biden – that they shared specific claims against the 53-year-old, the amount of the deductions he had taken and how much he owed in taxes.
Mr Shapley’s attorneys said in a Friday statement that Mr Biden’s lawyers have attempted to get the Department of Justice to take action against their clients for sharing information that was protected under whistleblower regulations.
“Taxpayer privacy laws are written by Congress, and it gave itself authority in those laws to hear disclosures about taxpayer information,” a lawyer for Mr Shapley said in the statement on Friday.
The agents shared their allegations regarding the US Department of Justice’s handling of the Biden probe earlier this year.
The Justice Department said in June that they had struck a deal with Mr Biden that meant that he would plead guilty to two tax misdemeanours after he didn’t pay his taxes on time in 2017 and 2018. Mr Biden also agreed to a deal that would mean that he wouldn’t be charged with a gun possession violation, but that agreement was torn up following scrutiny by a federal judge.
When the judge declined to greenlight the deal, discussions ended between the office of US Attorney David Weiss and Mr Biden’s legal team. Mr Weiss then asked for, and was granted, the status of special counsel.
Mr Biden was indicted on three felony gun charges on Thursday and the office of Mr Weiss has stated that they could bring tax charges, with Washington DC and California being on the list of possible jurisdictions.
One day earlier, Mr Biden sued Garrett Ziegler, a Trump-era White House official, of launching a “sustained, unhinged and obsessed campaign” against the Biden family, including hacking the alleged contents of a laptop that were central to political campaigns surrounding the 2020 presidential election, federal investigations and Republican-led congressional probes.
