They helped bring about the downfall of Hunter Biden. Now, they’re moving up in President Donald Trump’s administration.
Two IRS agents who blew the whistle on the agency’s kid-gloves treatment of the former first son are being rewarded with top positions at the Treasury Department.
And one of their primary functions, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, will be to “investigate the wrongdoing at the IRS.”
Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler are IRS agents who spent years investigating Hunter Biden’s tax evasion case.
They were removed from the probe in 2022, as the Associated Press reported, after complaining that David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware and later the “special counsel” in the Hunter Biden case, had deliberately taken a slow approach to the investigation as the 2020 election neared, then hindered enforcement for political reasons.
Their complaints about political favoritism were basically confirmed when now-former President Joe Biden issued his controversial pardon for Hunter for any federal crimes — including tax evasion — going back to 2014.
Since then, the two have alleged they were targeted for retaliation by IRS higher-ups — such as being passed over for promotions and threatened with demotions.
However, the men’s revelations — and the retaliation against them — helped spur action in the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, and in the Senate from Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who was the ranking GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time.
(Grassley, who chaired Judiciary from 2015 to 2019, returned to the committee’s top seat with the Republican takeover over of the Senate in the 2024 election.)
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In a news release Tuesday, Grassley praised the men’s promotions and sounded off on the Biden administration for its treatment of truth-tellers.
“Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler put their entire careers on the line to stand up for the truth, and instead of being thanked, the Biden administration treated them like skunks at a picnic,” Grassley said in the release.
“Far too many whistleblowers share a similar experience of retaliation. I hope today is the first of many redemption stories for whistleblowers who’ve been mistreated. By taking a stand for whistleblowers, President Trump and his cabinet are ushering in a new era of transparency and accountability.”
Bessent told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo on Tuesday that “the culture of being able to come forward when you see wrongdoing is a central part of our democracy.”
“I saw these two fellows before the president’s address to Congress, in Speaker [Mike] Johnson’s office,” Bessent said.
“They came over to me and said, ‘You know, sir, we’re still being harassed.’ And I had been in touch with Sen. Grassley about what was happening to them. But seeing them in person really brought it home for me.”
Bessent said that he decided to bring the pair out of the IRS and into his Treasury Department, which encompasses the IRS, and give them a year to “investigate the wrongdoing that’s going on at the IRS.”
Shapley will be senior deputy for investigations and enforcement, Bessent said. Ziegler will serve as a senior adviser for IRS reform, the AP reported.
“We’ll learn what’s been going on at the IRS, what’s been wrong. How could this Hunter Biden nonsense have happened?” Bessent told Bartiromo.
The goal, he said, is to make sure it never happens again.
“Whether you’re related to the president, no matter how powerful you are, the IRS is going to behave fairly, and we will make sure that happens,” he added.
“And these two gentlemen are going to form the basis for our investigation.”
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