WASHINGTON, DC – The IRS whistleblowers who reported on the preferential treatment given to former President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and the political interference by the president’s political appointees are filing an 84-page complaint with the Merit Systems Protection Board. The complaint filed this morning by their attorneys with Empower Oversight alleges in excruciating detail, illegal retaliation by the IRS and the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley and Special Agent Joseph Ziegler are asking the MSPB—an independent federal agency that protects government employees from unfair treatment—to investigate and order corrective action.
The unusual request comes after a multi-year investigation by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) where the agency found that the IRS retaliated against Shapley and Ziegler. Although the retaliation came at the urging of the Biden-era Justice Department, investigations of DOJ have been delayed and no one has been held accountable. The IRS officials who retaliated against Shapley and Ziegler remain in their chain of command and have been promoted after being found to retaliate rather than disciplined as the law requires.
“Waiting for other oversight authorities to complete their inquiries is untenable for Gary and Joe. These two patriots have done nothing but follow the law and now they are the ones who are still paying the price with their careers. Former Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss and the Justice Department successfully stalled oversight by the OSC, Treasury and Justice Department inspectors general. It’s shameful,” Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight said.
The MSPB appeal argues that Shapley and Ziegler’s disclosures—protected under laws shielding whistleblowers from retaliation—exposed violations of law, abuse of authority, and gross mismanagement. They allege four specific “personnel actions” by the IRS and DOJ, including increased duties, removal from the case, and blocked promotions, all tied to their whistleblowing. The filing cites Attorney General Merrick Garland’s 2022 congressional testimony, claiming it misrepresented the case’s handling, a contradiction the whistleblowers say they were punished for highlighting.
Among the many new details of retaliation outlined in the filing are:
- Anonymous Tips: Shapley received anonymous emails on June 23 and July 6, 2023, from an IRS-CI colleague alleging his supervisor was undermining his credibility. “I want you to know that your local leadership is actively working to undermine your credibility and work product… subjecting your work to scrutiny and criticism… to hold you and your work to a standard that others are not being held to.” (p. 53-54 of filing)
- Altered Email Incident: On January 13, 2025, Shapley’s current supervisor altered an email chain to hide a December 18, 2024, undercover operation request, “falsely making it appear as if [Shapley submitted the] request on January 13—well after the necessary deadlines—rather than a month earlier.” (p.62 of filing)
The whistleblowers now seek a full MSPB hearing, discovery into agency actions, and remedies like reinstatement of lost career opportunities.
“This has never been about Hunter Biden for Gary and Joe. For them it was all about doing the right thing,” Leavitt said. “Now, moving forward, today’s filing is about ensuring federal employees can report misconduct without fear of reprisal. If the government can silence whistleblowers like Gary and Joe, public trust erodes.”
Background
In 2018, Ziegler, while reviewing bank records, uncovered payments tied to Hunter Biden that suggested tax evasion and possible links to prostitution rings. Ziegler opened a criminal tax investigation, expecting standard IRS procedures to apply. He quickly noticed deviations such as the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office and DOJ Tax Division resisted typical investigative steps, like interviewing Hunter Biden or executing search warrants, often citing political sensitivities—especially as Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign gained momentum.
When Shapley became Ziegler’s supervisor in January 2020, the two escalated their concerns within IRS-CI (criminal investigations), documenting what they believed was “abuse of authority” and “gross mismanagement.” They reported that DOJ officials slow-walked the case, avoided charging decisions in jurisdictions overseen by Biden appointees, and even scrubbed Hunter Biden’s name from search warrants. By late 2021, despite evidence supporting six years of tax charges, the investigation stalled as political pressure mounted.
Shapley and Ziegler’s internal complaints went nowhere—senior IRS officials distanced themselves from the case, leaving Shapley to shoulder unprecedented responsibilities. Frustrated, the whistleblowers took their concerns to Congress, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), and the DOJ Office of Inspector General in 2022 and 2023, actions all protected under federal whistleblower laws.
After a tense October 2022 meeting where Shapley confronted Weiss about case mishandling, DOJ demanded the IRS remove both agents from the investigation. The IRS complied in May 2023, sidelining Shapley and Ziegler despite their stellar records. Shapley was passed over for a prestigious Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (J5) leadership role he was uniquely qualified for, while both faced marginalization, reduced duties, and a “cascading series of retaliatory actions.”
After 20 months of investigation, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) recently found the IRS had illegally gagged and retaliated against the whistleblowers. OSC determined that IRS gag orders violated federal law by omitting required language protecting whistleblower rights to speak to Congress or inspectors general. The IRS was forced to retract those orders, but the damage to Shapley and Ziegler’s careers persisted. The OSC also found that the IRS could not support its decision to remove the whistleblowers from the Hunter Biden case for any legitimate, nonretaliatory purpose.
Other action related to the filing
- Shapley and Ziegler have also filed a defamation lawsuit against Biden attorney Abbe Lowell, alleging that Lowell republished false statements about them that damaged their reputation and caused them irreparable harm.The suit alleges that the statements Lowell republished, made by Biden family lawyers in letters encouraging the Administration of their client’s father to prosecute Shapley and Ziegler, falsely accused the whistleblowers of breaking the law. The letters were part of a well-funded campaign launched to smear Shapley and Ziegler after they made protected whistleblower disclosures to Congress.
- Empower Oversight has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for failing to respond to multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for its communications related to IRS whistleblowers Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) Gary Shapley and Special Agent (SA) Joe Ziegler and the protected disclosures they made to Congress dating back to 2023.
- Shapley and Ziegler continue to work to intervene in Hunter Biden’s lawsuit against the IRS where he claims that his taxpayer privacy had been violated. The case was assigned to DOJ’s Tax Division—one of the offices Shapley and Ziegler had blown the whistle on. 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. Because of DOJ’s failure to vigorously defend against the lawsuit, Empower Oversight wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting additional DOJ communications, and SSA Shapley and SA Ziegler ultimately moved to intervene in Hunter Biden’s lawsuit. The motion was denied, which Shapley and Ziegler are appealing.
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