Hunter Biden’s Complaint Regarding Leaked Tax Returns Is Still Pending With The IRS

WASHINGTON D.C.: A federal judge has ruled that the IRS may be held accountable for the activities of two whistleblowers’ attorneys, which means that Hunter Biden’s complaint regarding the public revelation of his tax refund information will proceed. In September 2023, Biden filed a lawsuit against the IRS, claiming that two agents, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, had “completely disregarded their confidentiality obligations” and were involved in a “campaign to publicly smear” Biden by disclosing tax return information to media outlets “unauthorizedly,” which amounted to an “assault” on his right to privacy.

The Federal Agency Filed A Request

The son of President Joe Biden contended that Shapley & Ziegler were liable to rules prohibiting disclosure as they instructed their attorneys to disclose Biden’s tax information in public. In February, the federal agency filed a request to dismiss, claiming that Biden had suffered “actual damages” as a result of the agency’s purported failure to provide “safeguards” to stop two whistleblowers and their lawyers from revealing his “confidential tax return information” in interviews with the media.

Additionally, IRS attorneys contended that the agency is shielded from litigation concerning revelations made by non-federal employees of the government, specifically attorneys representing Shapley and Ziegler. As to Contreras’ writing, Congress had historically “intended taxpayers’ return data to be broadly safeguarded from disclosure in order to avoid abuse by Executive officers as well as politicization of the voluntary assessment system.”

The Judge Rejected Their Claims

“The development of these statutes further shows that Congress made the explicit decision that the federal government should be held civilly liable for the illegal actions of its employees, rather than the employees themselves.” A move to intervene on behalf of Shapley and Ziegler, who claimed that their purported activities were permitted by whistleblower protection policies & that Biden’s private return information was already available to the public, was also refused by the judge. Biden and the IRS both objected to the intervention request.

“The Court concurs with the parties, with whom the IRS agents have no legally protected stake in how this litigation turns out,” Contreras wrote. As they claimed, Shapley & Ziegler were “the real subject” of Biden’s complaint, but the judge rejected their claims. “Resolving this dispute will not directly affect the intervenors’ legally protected financial or property interests; rather, the real matter of this issue is the United States’s liability under 26 U.S.C. § 7431(a)(1),” the judge ruled.