Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida has taken a significant step, advocating the House throw its weight behind a lawsuit Hunter Biden, the president’s son, filed against the Internal Revenue Service. It was on Wednesday that Gaetz forwarded a key letter to the House Speaker Mike Johnson, imploring him to request the House Office of General Counsel to step in, in support of the IRS representatives who flagged certain irregularities linked to the examination of Biden.
Biden’s litigation was initiated back in September, and in it, he accused IRS investigators Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler of initiating a coordinated effort to tarnish his reputation and cause him personal distress. According to Biden, the pair had overstepped their bounds by revealing confidential taxpayer information, a move considered a legal violation.
The first month of this year saw the Department of Justice taking action, with ABC News reporting that the department had sought the lawsuit’s dismissal. Shapley’s defense crew, on the other hand, countered with a stout refusal of any inappropriate leaks beyond the reasonable exceptions set out in the whistleblower laws.
In the personalized letter addressed to Speaker Johnson, Gaetz strongly communicated the urgency for safeguarding these courageous whistleblowers. He referenced the House rules and relevant sections of the U.S. Code that make provisions for the House Office of General Counsel to wade into legal conflicts.
Gaetz further amplified his request, seeking the speaker to instruct the House Office of General Counsel to make concerted efforts to get involved in the Biden versus IRS case. The aim was dual fold: to uphold the rights of the House and to ensure the rights of all American citizens to give protected information to Congress remain unviolated.
Adding gravity to his communication, Gaetz attached to his letter both the original complaint filed by Biden, followed by the Department of Justice’s partial motion seeking dismissal. He urged the House Office of General Counsel to thoroughly go through these materials for a better understanding of the case.
In his letter, Gaetz observed that an adequate representation of the rights of the House to the Court by the Department of Justice was glaringly missing in the case at hand. He used this as a supporting point to emphasize the need for the active involvement of the House Office of General Counsel.
Gaetz highlighted an example to illustrate his point, he argued that there is an extremely narrow interpretation of the Internal Revenue Code § 6103’s whistleblower provisions in the complaint, an interpretation that the Department of Justice offers no contestation against.
He further stressed on the House’s explicit stake in the widest conceivable interpretation of the content that an individual can rightfully disclose to congressional committees. This assertion was the core of his communication and one that Gaetz hoped would galvanize Speaker Johnson to action.
Hunter Biden’s legal turmoil extends beyond this particular lawsuit. There are looming criminal charges in his horizon, spawned from an investigation helmed by special counsel David Weiss that was jolted into the public sphere by whistleblower testimonies last year.
President Biden’s eldest son is combatting indictments related to federal gun and tax charges, to which he responded with a resounding plea of not guilty. Whether these charges will stand or crumble remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: Hunter Biden finds himself under a microscope.
Adding a more complex layer to an already intricate scenario, Biden was subjected to an off-the-record deposition with investigators from the House last month. This is part of an ongoing impeachment probe concerning his father, the sitting President, Joe Biden.
The younger Biden, however, chose not to attend a publicly scheduled hearing the following week. As always, his actions, or in this case non-action, make for interesting debate among those assessing the political climate and speculating about the course it may take in the future.
