IRS whistleblowers still facing retaliation from DOJ, accusations of leaking, lawyers say

Lawyers representing the IRS whistleblowers who investigated Hunter Biden’s taxes say their clients are continuing to face retaliation from the Justice Department even six months into the new administration.

Empower Oversight, the whistleblower group representing IRS employees Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, filed a reply on Wednesday to the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the pair’s appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board for legal retaliation by the Biden-era Justice Department and IRS against the agents for making protecting disclosures to Congress. 

In the filing, the group accused the Justice Department of continuing to make false statements about its clients, alleging that the whistleblowers illegally leaked Hunter Biden’s private tax information to the media, and called the assertion “baseless.”

“It’s been nearly three years since DOJ retaliation against these whistleblowers began, more than two years since they were removed from the case, and over two years since they filed with the Office of Special Counsel,” Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight and who represents the whistleblowers, said in a statement. 

“Now that the Hunter Biden criminal case is over and David Weiss has left DOJ, there is no excuse for the Department to continue dragging its feet. It should work with us to provide a remedy instead of compounding the retaliation.”

According to Empower Oversight, the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case “perpetuates the false suggestion from Hunter Biden’s defense attorneys that Shapley was the source behind an October 6, 2022 Washington Post article” about the tax case. The attorneys note that such a leak would constitute a violation of taxpayer privacy laws. 

Biden’s personal attorney, Abbe Lowell, was the first to claim that Shapley and Ziegler had improperly leaked his client’s tax information to the Post, which wrote an article titled “Federal agents see chargeable tax, gun-purchase case against Hunter Biden.” This contention prompted Shapley to send an affidavit in July 2023 to the House Ways and Means Committee denying any communication with the Post reporters who wrote the story. 

Empower Oversight also says the Justice Department falsely asserts that the Post story states “federal agents” were the source for the outlet’s claims. However, the article attributes its reporting on the status of the investigation on Biden, whose father, Joe Biden, was president at the time, only to “people familiar with the case,” the article and the court documents show. This description “could just as easily apply to Hunter Biden’s own legal team,” Empower Oversight said in a press release. 

Shapley and Ziegler’s attorneys request that the department be “admonished” for misleading the Merit Systems Protection Board in the filing."

Agency counsel either knowingly inserted a false statement into their pleading or were careless in a way that conveniently advanced their inaccurate narrative. Either way, they should be held to account,” the lawyers wrote in their response to the agency’s motion. 

You can read Empower Oversight’s court filing below: 

Shapley and Ziegler first filed a complaint with the board in February. Their complaint alleges that they faced retaliation from the Justice Department and the IRS in the form of “marginalization and isolation” in their workplace, removal from the Hunter Biden tax investigation, reduction of duties and responsibilities, and unreasonable scrutiny and delays to investigative requests. They requested that the MSPB conduct a hearing on the retaliation and order “appropriate corrective action” by the agencies that participated. 

The move follows an earlier finding from the Office of Special Counsel, the agency responsible for ensuring the protection of whistleblowers, that the IRS wrongfully retaliated against its employees and may have violated federal law in doing so by trying to gag the agents from disclosing wrongdoing. The office, however, did not find in favor of the whistleblowers on claims that Shapley was passed over for a promotion and endured other retaliation, which prompted the appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, Just the News previously reported. 

The retaliation from the then-Biden Justice Department and IRS came after the agents made protected whistleblower disclosures to Congress about political interference, potential conflicts of interest, and preferential treatment in the Hunter Biden tax investigation. 

Their disclosures blew up a planned plea deal that would have spared Hunter Biden prison time. 

After the two decorated IRS agents provided public proof of political interference in the case, prosecutors brought two indictments against Hunter Biden and secured convictions on multiple tax and gun charges. He was facing sentencing and the possibility of prison time when his father issued controversial pardons last December, wiping out the convictions.

Hunter Biden also sued the IRS for the whistleblowers’ disclosures to Congress, alleging that they had improperly disclosed his personal tax information. He voluntarily dismissed that lawsuit earlier this year. 

Shapley and Ziegler’s lawsuit against former Biden attorney Lowell for defamation related to similar claims made to the press is still ongoing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.