Since the Justice Department announced three new felony gun charges for Hunter Biden, he's turned to the offensive in his legal affairs.
President Joe Biden's son started the week after he was indicted on three felony gun charges by filing a lawsuit Monday against two IRS employees, accusing them of unlawfully revealing his tax returns when they testified about their investigation. Last week, he filed a suit in California against a man he says illegally posted the contents of his infamous laptop that was first discovered by a Delaware repair shop owner.
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But the younger Biden's recent litigious shift isn't abnormal, constitutional attorney Andrew Lieb of Lieb at Law told the Washington Examiner, saying it is actually a sign of "excellent lawyering."
Lieb indicated the younger Biden's legal offensive was foreshadowed by the failed plea agreement between his attorneys and U.S. Attorney David Weiss's office in late July when his counsel admitted their belief that the deal would preclude the first son from facing additional charges stemming from a five-year investigation, leading to a point of disagreement among prosecutors.
"Obviously, he was keeping a low profile and not trying to smear or embarrass or create a bigger deal out of it when he was trying to resolve it. Now it doesn't look like he's gonna resolve it. So he has to go on the offensive," Lieb said.
The spat of legal filings comes on the heels of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's start of an impeachment inquiry into the president as Republicans allege he may have benefited from business dealings his son had in Ukraine and China when he was vice president. McCarthy announced this week during an interview on Fox News's Sunday Morning Futures with host Maria Bartiromo that Hunter Biden "will get subpoenaed" at some point during the process.
Here are the three major legal moves Hunter's attorneys have made since his indictment:
Challenging the IRS whistleblowers
The lawsuit filed on Monday contains the allegation that two IRS whistleblowers improperly disclosed Hunter Biden's tax information and comes after the first son was indicted last week on three felony charges related to a 2018 gun purchase.
Hunter Biden's attorney Abbe Lowell alleged that Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who is another agent on the case, and their legal counsel spoke publicly about tax information of the president's son that was "squarely prohibited" from disclosure.
Meanwhile, legal experts have been anticipating potential new charges for the first son related to two misdemeanor tax violations dating back to 2017 and 2018. Hunter Biden initially planned to plead guilty to these violations in exchange for a pretrial diversion agreement on a felony gun charge before the plea deal broke apart.
Former public defender Michael Benza speculated from a "defense lawyer's perspective," a prevailing ruling for the younger Biden may cost the IRS and the Justice Department "access to those records as a punishment for the violation of the release of those records."
"This could be related as a side challenge to the availability of them to bring those charges based on [purported] misconduct by the IRS in the investigation, things like that," said Benza, who stressed he's not privy to the defense's strategies.
Fighting the gun charges
Hunter Biden has yet to be arraigned since he was charged with three felony tax charges last week, but his counsel has already suggested their strategy will hinge on the Supreme Court's latest Second Amendment rulings.
"We believe these charges are barred by the agreement the prosecutors made with Mr. Biden, the recent rulings by several federal courts that this statute is unconstitutional, and the facts that he did not violate that law, and we plan to demonstrate all of that in court," Lowell told the Washington Examiner last week.
The first two charges against Hunter Biden are similar, one that he lied about his drug use to obtain a weapon illegally and another that he falsely claimed he was not addicted to any stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance on a federal firearm Form 4473. The president's son has acknowledged his past drug addiction in public interviews and in his memoir.
The third charge bars firearm ownership by anyone who is an “unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance," though the same charge was recently ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, citing a Supreme Court ruling in Bruen v. New York Rifle & Pistol Association.
The appeals court ruling isn't binding on the Delaware jurisdiction but signals Lowell's willingness to test the new Bruen precedent on his client.
Taking on the 'laptop from hell' dissemination
Hours before the indictment on gun charges from Weiss's office, the younger Biden sued Garrett Ziegler of the nonprofit firm Marco Polo for allegedly "accessing, tampering with, manipulating, altering, copying and damaging computer data that they do not own” in violation of California's computer fraud laws.
A representative from Marco Polo told the Washington Examiner, "The lawsuit is intended primarily to silence or intimidate Marco Polo rather than redress a genuine grievance," adding that an anti-SLAPP motion, which is often filed to dismiss meritless lawsuits against First Amendment protections, "is in order."
Similarly, the first son is countersuing the repair shop owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, alleging him of illicitly distributing his personal data. Mac Isaac had sued Hunter Biden for defamation last year, claiming he falsely insisted that the laptop was not his, that it had been stolen, or that his information had been hacked.
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While Lieb described the recent strategy by Hunter Biden as simply "competent legal service," he said it doesn't come without a hefty price tag.
"I think the only thing we can derive from this is not that his dad's the president, but [Hunter Biden] has access to resources to defend himself without any cap," Lieb said, adding, "That's what I'm saying when you start three lawsuits in a week."