WASHINGTON, D.C. – IRS whistleblowers former Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley and Special Agent Joe Ziegler reached settlements with the IRS and Justice Department (DOJ) for illegal retaliation against them. The settlements included significant compensation for damages and a requirement for new training for federal prosecutors to deter future whistleblower retaliation. Shapley and Ziegler’s 84-page complaint with the Merit Systems Protection Board alleged in excruciating detail, illegal retaliation by the two agencies.
In 2020, the whistleblowers began making protected disclosures about the preferential treatment that was given to the former president’s son, Hunter Biden, who has since been prosecuted and was given a sweeping pardon by his father.
After Shapley and Ziegler made protected disclosures, Biden family lawyers quickly launched a well-funded campaign to smear the whistleblowers, unsuccessfully pushing the Biden Justice Department to prosecute them. Hunter Biden filed a lawsuit against the IRS targeting the whistleblowers, which he dismissed earlier this year. After false statements made by Biden lawyer, Abbe Lowell, Shapley and Ziegler filed a defamation lawsuit against him.
The lawsuit was dismissed today in an opinion by Judge Richard Leon, a senior judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Shapley and Ziegler issued the following statement today:
“We have been in the public eye because we did our duties as loyal public servants. We legally blew the whistle when Hunter Biden almost escaped prosecution for his crimes because he was the President’s son. We had to file a lawsuit against Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, because he falsely accused us of committing serious felonies in retaliation. Since then, Biden pled guilty to his crimes and has been pardoned. He also dropped his lawsuit against the IRS targeting us for our protected disclosures.
“We have recently concluded settlement agreements of our claims that the DOJ and IRS illegally retaliated against us for blowing the whistle on the improper politicization of that case.
“In addition to substantial compensation for the harm we suffered, the DOJ has agreed to use this example to train all federal prosecutors for years to come, so other brave civil servants are not victimized the way we were.
“Today, a federal judge announced that when Abbe Lowell published that we had committed a “clear-cut crime unprotected by any whistleblower statute” and other similar allegations, he was merely speaking his opinion. Although the judge dismissed our defamation case, we disagree that Lowell’s attack was just his opinion and will consider whether to appeal.
“We think the record speaks for itself about what we did, who Biden is, and the value of Lowell’s so-called opinion.”