The two IRS investigators who exposed details of the investigation into former first son Hunter Biden have been promoted to senior roles at the Department of the Treasury.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday promoted Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler to senior advisers for IRS reform at the agency. Shapley will also serve as deputy chief of IRS criminal investigations.
The announcement comes after President Donald Trump removed Secret Service protection for Hunter Biden, who Trump said was escorted on a vacation to South Africa by as many as 18 Secret Service agents this week.
In 2023, Shapley and Ziegler provided Congress with information about the federal investigation into Biden, which started in 2018. Shapley and Ziegler, the top two IRS investigators on the Biden probe, accused IRS and Department of Justice officials of pulling punches in the investigation for political purposes. They also accused the IRS of improperly removing them from the investigation in May 2023 as retaliation for making whistleblower disclosures to Congress.
Shapley and Ziegler gave Congress emails and financial documents that showed the younger Biden evaded millions of dollars in taxes on income he received from business deals in Ukraine, Romania, and China. He deducted hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal expenses from his taxes, including payments for vehicles, escorts, and $10,000 for membership at a Los Angeles sex club.
They also revealed text messages that Hunter Biden sent to business partners in China that undercut former president Joe Biden’s claims to have no knowledge about his son’s foreign business dealings.
Their disclosures prompted Special Counsel David Weiss to take a more aggressive approach in his investigation. Weiss was poised to give a plea deal to Biden that would have slapped him with misdemeanor charges for evading taxes, and a deferred felony prosecution for a gun crime.
But after Shapley and Ziegler came forward, Weiss obtained felony charges against Biden for both tax evasion and a felony for lying on forms to purchase a firearm. Biden was convicted in trials for both cases, but his father pardoned him on Dec. 2, just weeks before he was to be sentenced.
"We have been motivated by one singular mantra: do what’s right. It’s never been easy, and there have been more pitfalls than one would hope, but we appreciate the opportunity Secretary Bessent is giving us to utilize our skills and firsthand knowledge of the agency to further the work of the administration to root out waste and fraud from the federal government and make a difference," Shapley and Ziegler said in a statement issued through Empower Oversight, a watchdog group that has represented them in the whistleblower case.