A court official accompanied by four police officers had to break into the home of Stephen Moore, Donald Trump’s pick for the Federal Reserve board, after he repeatedly failed to pay debts to his ex-wife.

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The group used a locksmith to force their way into Moore’s house in Virginia in May 2013, according to court filings. They were there to prepare the property for a court-ordered sale in order to raise $330,000 that Moore owed his ex-wife after their divorce.

When the court official telephoned Moore on her way out to ask where she should leave the new key to his home, Moore “was very argumentative” and “denied that we were in his house”, the official, Kyle Skopic, said in a June 2013 motion.

The court records were reopened to the public by a judge on Friday, in response to legal action by the Guardian and other media. They had been temporarily sealed this week following the publication of reports about Moore’s past financial and legal problems.

Six days after the authorized break-in at his house, Moore made a long overdue payment of $150,000 to his ex-wife, Allison, the records show. She then asked the court to halt the action to sell Moore’s home.

Democratic senators wrote to Moore requesting detailed information on his finances following the earlier reports. He is also being pursued by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for $75,000 in taxes he is said to owe from 2014.

Moore, 59, disputes the claim by the IRS and has described the reports on his legal issues as “vile and vicious and underhanded”.

Trump has said he intends to nominate Moore for a vacancy on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors. The president said this week he also plans to nominate Herman Cain, the former presidential candidate and pizza restaurant entrepreneur, to the board.

Both choices have been criticised by some economists, who point to their lack of academic publications and other perceived weaknesses. Moore and Cain would need to be confirmed by the US Senate, which is controlled by the Republican party.

The court file that was reopened on Friday detailed how Moore ignored contacts from Skopic after Fairfax county circuit court appointed her as a special commissioner to handle the forced sale of his house.

Moore had by then been found in contempt of court for failing to pay the debt, which included alimony, child support and money owed from the couple’s divorce settlement.

Skopic wrote to Moore and received no response, she said. Then, when she reached him by telephone, he “curtly advised that the house was not for sale and hung up”. Four days after the call, she arrived at the house in Falls Church with the police officers, who “cleared the property to make sure there were no dangers”.

The court records state that Moore, then an economics writer for the Wall Street Journal, was earning at least $420,000 a year at the time of his divorce in May 2011.

Moore has held positions at several conservative thinktanks in Washington, including the Heritage Foundation. He was a founder of the Club For Growth, the conservative advocacy group.

A document in the newly court file showed that Moore disputed an allegation in his ex-wife’s divorce complaint that she had been the “primary caretaker and role model” for the couple’s children, having quit her job to raise them.

In his response, Moore said through an attorney that he had “been the primary bread winner in the home and as such provided an extremely comfortable lifestyle for the wife and the children”.

Moore has attributed his dispute with the IRS to confusion over whether he was permitted to deduct child support payments from his income tax return. He claims that he and his second wife are actually owed money by the IRS due to separate overpayments.