Hunter Biden, son of the President, sued the Internal Revenue Service Monday, asserting that two agents who alleged investigation interference had wrongly shared his personal tax information.
The lawsuit claims that the IRS agents, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, “targeted and sought to embarrass Mr. Biden” when they came forward as whistleblowers and testified in July before the House Oversight Committee, asserting that the Justice Department mishandled its years-long investigation of Hunter Biden.
Last week, Hunter Biden was indicted on federal gun charges after lying on a form in 2018 about his drug addiction. The indictment was filed in federal court in Delaware by Special Counsel David Weiss, who began investigating Hunter Biden in 2019 during the Trump Administration and has remained on the case during his father’s Administration.
In July, an agreed-to guilty plea by Hunter Biden was put on hold related to the gun possession charges as well as tax evasion charges. Biden had been expected to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges that he failed to pay taxes on time as part of a deal that also included an agreement on the gun charge. Republicans had blasted the agreement as a “sweetheart deal.”
However, the plea deal between federal prosecutors and Biden had hit a snag in federal court in Delaware when U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika raised questions about its broader implications regarding prosecutors’ ongoing investigation.
Both Shapley and Ziegler have denied political motivations are behind their accusations that prosecutors have been “slow-walking” the Hunter Biden investigation.
Last week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) opened an impeachment inquiry into President Biden after House Republicans claimed without evidence that he and Hunter Biden had engaged in an influence-peddling scheme. The allegations echo those that former President Trump has made for years against the Biden family.
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