Hunter Biden launches lawsuit against IRS over divulsion of tax info

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: News websites
18 Sep 2023 18:15
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Biden's lawsuit claims that IRS agents aimed to publicly shame him by making media statements that revealed sensitive tax information.

Hunter Biden is seen leaving a courthouse in Wilmington, Del., July 26, 2023. (AP)

Hunter Biden has filed a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), claiming that the agency unlawfully divulged his tax information and failed to protect his confidential records.

"The IRS and its agents have conducted themselves under a presumption that the rights that apply to every other American citizen do not apply to Mr. Biden," the lawsuit alleged.

According to the lawsuit, it is claimed that IRS agents aimed to publicly shame Hunter Biden by making media statements that revealed sensitive tax information.

The legal action specifically highlights two IRS agents, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, for their supposed involvement in the leaks, although neither of them is formally named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

According to the suits, the agents and their attorneys "willfully disregarded federal tax law, undermining Americans' faith in the IRS and the purported confidentiality of its investigations."

The lawsuit emerges at a time when Hunter is confronted with the potential of being sentenced to prison.

Last week, the younger Biden was formally charged with offenses connected to the alleged unlawful possession of a firearm, after a prior plea agreement fell apart during the summer.

Corruption Runs Rampant

On August 30, Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general, said in an exclusive interview with Fox News that he was dismissed by the Obama administration while investigating Burisma Holdings, the energy company on whose board Hunter Biden served.

In an interview with Fox News' Brian Kilmeade, Shokin said that he believes he was fired in 2016 because then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter were bribed.

Shokin was appointed prosecutor general of Ukraine in 2015, but was ousted by then-President Petro Poroshenko the following year due to allegations of corruption and pressure from the US government, led by Biden.

"I have said repeatedly in my previous interviews that Poroshenko fired me at the insistence of the then Vice President Biden because I was investigating Burisma," Shokin told Kilmeade.

"[Poroshenko] understood and so did Vice President Biden, that had I continued to oversee the Burisma investigation, we would have found the facts about the corrupt activities that they were engaging in. That included both Hunter Biden and Devon Archer and others."