Hunter Biden is suing the Internal Revenue Service over disclosures two agents made to Congress and the media about his taxes. The lawsuit says lRS criminal investigative agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler illegally revealed tax details when they publicly raised concerns about the handling of the criminal investigation into the first son. It accuses the IRS of failing to keep the two men from sharing Biden’s financial information. “[T]he harm he has suffered — reputationally and emotionally — from their wrongful conduct has been staggering,” says the suit in Washington, D.C., federal court. The suit cites a ist of media interviews with the IRS whistleblowers and their lawyers, including a podcast interview with journalist John Solomon and TV interviews on CBS News, CNN, and Fox News. It alleges that Shapley, Ziegler and their lawyers revealed Biden’s private tax information in these interviews, violating his privacy rights, Politico reports.
“[T]he IRS did not even instruct Mr. Shapley or his representatives to refrain from publicly and unlawfully disclosing Mr. Biden’s confidential tax return information, much less take reasonable steps to prevent its personnel from unlawfully disclosing Mr. Biden’s tax return information,” the suit says. The suit seeks $1,000 for “each act of unauthorized disclosure” as well as punitive damages. It asks a judge to order the IRS to set up a data security plan that complies with the Privacy Act. Tristan Leavitt of a watchdog group representing Shapley, Empower Oversight, said, “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." Biden’s lawsuit is part of an aggressive posture that coincides with his indictment on gun charges. He sued a former Trump White House official who helped distribute the purported contents of his laptop. His lawyers accused Republican lawmakers of bullying the feds into bringing gun charges against their client.