Despite his claims of being broke, Hunter Biden's 'lawfare' continues against IRS whistleblowers

Hunter Biden sought to dismiss one of his lawsuits this week, arguing that he was too broke to continue the legal effort, but he is still continuing his lawsuit against the IRS over two whistleblowers who exposed the Justice Department’s mishandling of his criminal case, lawyers for the IRS whistleblowers told Just the News. 

Hunter Biden filed a motion on Wednesday to voluntarily dismiss his lawsuit against former Trump White House aide Garrett Ziegler, a former White House aide who published contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop through his Marco Polo research group, claiming he was facing financial difficulties. The two whistleblowers still in court with Hunter Biden are IRS supervisory special agent Gary Shapley and IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler.

“In one court, Hunter Biden is claiming he doesn't have enough money for his lawyers to keep the lawfare going, but in another, his top-dollar hired gun from Big Law, Abbe Lowell, is still pushing a bogus suit against the IRS to target the whistleblowers for harassment and retaliation,” Jason Foster, the founder of Empower Oversight, which is representing the IRS whistleblowers, told Just the News.

Joe Biden’s son told the California federal court's Central District on Wednesday that “while I have other civil actions pending, I am assessing each one on a case-by-case basis to allocate my limited resources. I cannot describe the details of those analyses as it involves attorney-client communications and the attorney work doctrine, but significant changes will be made to all of the cases in which I am involved.”

Allegedly unlawful disclosure

Hunter Biden’s legal team, led by Abbe Lowell, filed a September 2023 lawsuit against the IRS, claiming that the IRS whistleblowers had engaged in the “unlawful disclosure of Mr. Biden’s confidential tax return.” Lowell also previously sent letters to the Biden DOJ’s National Security Division and the Delaware attorney general in 2023, pressuring them to launch investigations into a number of figures involved in helping disseminate the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop hard drive. 

Lowell's client list is a "Who's Who" of famous — and infamous — characters, including Bob Menendez, John Edwards, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Dan Rostenkowski, Charles Keating and Gary Condit. According to Politico, Lowell often seeks fees between $855 per hour and more than $1,500 per hour.

The IRS whistleblowers have consistently argued that they did nothing "unlawful" and followed all of the laws and procedures when they blew the whistle about DOJ and IRS stonewalling on the federal case against Hunter Biden. Last month, Empower Oversight — who is defending the two IRS agents — released findings from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, in which the lawyers said OSC found ​​”the IRS issued illegal gag orders and improperly removed them from the Hunter Biden investigation as reprisal for their protected disclosures.” The National Review reported the OSC's findings on February 6.

Hunter Biden’s legal team initially directed its 2023 lawsuit at the IRS as an agency, but because the actions of the whistleblowers are what's at issue, the whistleblowers moved to intervene in the case to make their voices and arguments heard.

According to their attorneys, the courts blocked them for more than a year from being able to do so. Empower Oversight also argues that the IRS is not vigorously defending against this lawsuit the way that they should.

Institutional conflicts of interest

When Hunter Biden filed suit against the IRS, the Justice Department handed the case to its Tax Division: one of the very same offices upon which Shapley and Ziegler had blown the whistle.

The whistleblower lawyers contended: “The Tax Division initially failed to defend against the false allegations, omitting any mention of the whistleblower provision in the taxpayer privacy laws and only belatedly burying in a footnote that DOJ did not believe the whistleblowers broke the law.”

Empower Oversight sent a letter to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in April, saying, “It is an understatement to note there are institutional conflicts of interest that could impact how vigorously and effectively the Department (particularly the Tax Division) will defend the actions of SSA Shapley and SA Ziegler. The Department’s behavior raises the prospect that the Department may fail to zealously defend the Government’s interests in this lawsuit, simply out of a desire to see critics of the President’s son punished.”

Empower Oversight continued to express frustration with how the IRS was handling the case in August, contending that “despite the obviously meritless basis for the frivolous suit against the IRS, the IRS refused to file a motion to dismiss the case entirely and even opposes the IRS whistleblowers’ effort to intervene and ask for dismissal.”

The district court denied the motion which would have allowed the IRS whistleblowers to intervene in the case, and in October they appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In January, the whistleblower legal team argued that their clients must be allowed to weigh in on “whether they violated federal law or whether they complied with federal law by making protected whistleblower disclosures to the United States House of Representatives.”

Legally protected whistleblowing

Lowell argued to the federal appeals court that “the issue was thoroughly briefed and conclusively decided” at a district court level and so an appeals court should not review it, and on Biden's behalf filed a motion for summary affirmance. The three-judge panel in late February denied the motion.

Empower Oversight said as a result, “now the whistleblowers can proceed to briefing and a hearing before a three-judge panel on their appeal” where the whistleblowers can “plead their case to give them a voice in the litigation about their legally protected whistleblowing.”

The IRS whistleblowers counterattacked by filing their own defamation lawsuit against Hunter Biden’s lawyer in September, arguing that Lowell had “falsely accused the whistleblowers of breaking the law.”

Hunter Biden initially reached a plea agreement with then-special counsel David Weiss on federal charges related to tax crimes and the illegal purchase of a handgun in what congressional Republicans dubbed a “sweetheart deal” in June 2023. The deal collapsed under scrutiny by a federal judge the next month, thanks in part to the revelations made by the IRS whistleblowers.

Joe Biden's son was later convicted by a Delaware jury on gun charges in June, and then pled guilty to tax charges in California in September. He was found guilty of making a false statement on his gun application and being in possession of a firearm while being an illegal drug user. Hunter Biden then pled guilty to what the DOJ described as “a four-year scheme in which he chose not to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed.”

The Justice Department had reportedly begun negotiations on a plea deal with Hunter Biden in May 2023, roughly one month before Shapley’s lawyer first reached out to Congress to blow the whistle, and the same day that the IRS whistleblowers were told they were being pulled from the Hunter Biden case.

Presidential pardon doesn't save Hunter from civil liability 

The GOP-led House Ways and Means Committee voted to release the IRS whistleblower congressional testimony to the public in June 2023

The IRS whistleblowers said in congressional transcripts that Weiss claimed that he was limited in his prosecutorial decision-making despite Garland’s claims to the contrary, that a Hunter Biden business associate told the FBI that Joe Biden had stopped by at least one China-related business meeting at Hunter Biden’s apparent request, that “optics” prevented a search warrant at Joe Biden’s guest house, and that the assistant U.S. attorney in the Delaware federal prosecutor’s office had told investigators “don’t ask about the big guy” — in reference to Joe Biden.

President Joe Biden pardoned his son in December of 2024, despite repeatedly saying that “I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted." Presidential pardons do not nullify a case or judgment in a civil action, thus Hunter Biden may face more expenses he allegedly can't afford if there is any award against him in the ongoing civil litigation. 

As for the pardon, the IRS whistleblowers responded by saying that “no amount of lies or spin can hide the simple truth that the Justice Department nearly let the President's son off the hook for multiple felonies.” The whistleblowers wrote that “we produced mountains of evidence and testified under oath about the machinations his Justice Department, including Mr. Weiss, used to shield the Biden family from a thorough investigation of alleged corruption in Ukraine, Romania, and China.”

When it was released in January, Weiss’s final report was only 27 pages long, followed by lengthy appendices.

The IRS whistleblowers said that “the Weiss report leaves too many important questions unanswered, and the American people deserve answers. DOJ, FBI, and IRS leadership should have done the right thing from the beginning. We should not have had to risk our careers to end the preferential treatment being given to the President’s son. Years later, we are still facing whistleblower retaliation. Why are we the only ones suffering any consequences? It’s time for a serious investigation, and it’s time for accountability.”

Biden: “I am not in a position where I can borrow money”

In seeking to dismiss his lawsuit against the former Trump aide in California, Joe Biden’s son told the federal district court that “since late 2023 and through today, my income has decreased significantly.” Hunter Biden said that, prior to that his income came primarily from sales of his artwork and of his Beautiful Things memoir. 

Hunter Biden's book sales numbers don't quite add up. Biden told the court that in the two to three years before the end of 2023, “I sold 27 pieces for art [sic] at an average price of $54,481.48, but since then I have only sold one piece of art for $36,000.” He also said that in the six months prior to April 2023, he sold 3,161 copies of his book, but that in the six months after the statements he sold only 1,100 copies of his book. USA Today reported that as of June of 2024 Biden sold 39,086 copies in physical and digital versions combined.

Expecting to obtain paid speaking engagements and appearances

Art gallery owner Georges Bergès told congressional investigators last year that the majority of the first son’s artwork was purchased by Democratic donors. Hunter Biden’s memoir extensively detailed his illegal drug use, but avoided discussion of his past deals with shady Chinese businessmen, didn’t mention the name of the child he had with a stripper, avoided the DOJ’s tax and gun investigations, and noted his infamous “purported” laptop only once.

The son of the former president wrote Wednesday: “Given the positive feedback and reviews of my artwork and memoir, I was expecting to obtain paid speaking engagements and paid appearances, but that has not happened. This significant decrease in revenue has also impacted my ability to pay off my significant debt, which as has [sic] been reported in the press as being several million dollars. As a result of this, I am not in a position where I can borrow money.”

Hunter Biden also contended that “Defendant Garrett Ziegler admitted to hacking my iCloud in multiple public statements.” Lawyers for Ziegler pushed back in court on Thursday, saying “Mr. Biden still continues to make the baseless allegation that Mr. Ziegler ‘hacked’ his computer — but refuses to participate in discovery or even consult a qualified expert.” Those lawyers added that “Mr. Biden does not actually admit he is ‘millions’ of dollars in debt – only that the press reports that he is millions of dollars in debt. … It is well documented that Mr. Biden has troubles with the Internal Revenue Service and that he received a Presidential pardon, but these factors weigh in favor of finding that Mr. Biden was at fault in creating the crisis that requires ex parte relief.”

The IRS whistleblowers, still dealing with the lawsuit filed by Hunter Biden’s legal team, previously revealed that the FBI verified the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop in November 2019. The subject of the laptop was self-censored by The New York Times and The Washington Post for more than a year until March of 2022. In a poll found on Congress.com, Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics found that "79 percent of Americans suggest President Donald Trump likely would have won reelection if voters had known the truth about Hunter Bidenʼs laptop."