“We are under siege,” the son, Claudio González Jr., said in a statement to The New York Times, declining to be interviewed. “But we will continue to denounce corruption and impunity whenever we find it, be it public or private.”

“Mexico is not condemned to be corrupt,” he added.

The spying scandal has rocked Mexico. Nearly two-dozen people, including some of the country’s most prominent journalists, academics and human rights lawyers, as well as international officials investigating crime in Mexico, have been targeted with sophisticated cybertechnology, known as Pegasus, that was bought by the government for tens of millions of dollars.

The government has denied knowledge or responsibility in all of the cases, and has begun its own inquiry to determine who authorized and ran the spying campaign.

But Mr. González Jr. is perhaps the clearest instance in which the president has been described as openly criticizing and trying to silence a target of the spying, potentially bringing Mr. Peña Nieto closer to the hacking scandal than in any other case.

And that is not the only punitive action the government has taken against the family.

In a single day this year, the authorities initiated nine separate audits of organizations that Mr. González Jr. has been deeply involved with, and the government has signaled that it may revoke some of their nonprofit statuses, according to representatives of the organizations and others with firsthand knowledge of the audits. Some donors are already considering halting contributions, fearful of being seen as taking sides against the government.

“If you combat corruption, corruption will combat you,” added Mr. González Jr., who received a personal audit from the government on the same day that his organizations did. “Change comes at a price.”