- The settlement admits the IRS agents were legally authorized to disclose Hunter Biden investigation details to Congress, validating their whistleblower status.
- Lowell’s defamation case was dropped with mutual releases and no payment, effectively undercutting Hunter Biden’s legal attacks on the agents.
It’s been a long, twisted road for the IRS agents who dared to call out what they saw as favoritism in the federal probe of Hunter Biden.
On Thursday, a quiet but telling settlement dropped, with Hunter’s high-powered attorney essentially conceding that those whistleblowers had every right to blow the lid off to Congress.
This isn’t just some footnote in the endless Biden saga—it’s a rare moment of accountability that underscores how the gears of power can grind against the little guy trying to do their job.
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The players here are familiar if you’ve followed the Hunter Biden circus.
Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, both IRS investigators, stepped forward back in 2023 with explosive claims.
They accused the Justice Department of dragging its feet, burying leads, and shielding the president’s son from the full weight of a tax evasion probe.
Here’s What Makes This Story So Compelling
Shapley, a supervisory special agent, and Ziegler, a criminal investigator, painted a picture of interference that went all the way up the chain— from “optics” blocking a search of a Delaware guest house to an assistant U.S. attorney reportedly warning off questions about “the big guy,” a not-so-subtle nod to Joe Biden.
Their disclosures to Congress weren’t just whistleblowing; they were protected under federal law.
And now, in a joint statement released by Empower Oversight—the nonprofit law firm representing the agents—Hunter Biden’s lead counsel, Abbe Lowell, has acknowledged as much.
The settlement resolves a defamation lawsuit the agents had filed against Lowell after he accused them of illegally leaking confidential info.
No money changed hands, no appeals are coming, and both sides are walking away with mutual releases.
But the language in that statement? It’s loaded.
“IRS employees Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, together with D.C. attorney Abbe Lowell, have resolved the defamation case that Mr. Shapley and Mr. Ziegler filed against Mr. Lowell in federal district court in Washington, D.C. and that the court dismissed with prejudice,” the joint release reads.
It continues: “While the Parties continue to have their disagreements about the matters in the lawsuit, they agree it is best to move on from litigation, and to dispense with any appeals, on the basis of the statements below, mutual releases from further litigation, and with no payment or other consideration from Mr. Lowell.”
Here’s How it Unravels
Digging deeper, the agreement gets to the heart of the dispute.
Both sides now “agree that the whistle-blower provisions of 5 U.S.C. § 2302 and 26 U.S.C. § 6103 authorized Messrs. Shapley and Ziegler to make disclosures of otherwise confidential tax information about the investigation of Hunter Biden to the tax committees in Congress and to designated agents of those committees for the purpose of obtaining legal advice.”
Translation: Yeah, they could legally spill to lawmakers. No rogue agents here—just civil servants following the rules.
The statement also covers their media chats: “Both parties agree that, when speaking to the media, Messrs. Shapley and Ziegler believed they acted in good faith to follow the law and to limit their remarks to information that had already been lawfully disclosed by others, and if so, were not disclosing confidential information.”
And for Lowell? “Both parties agree that, in his court filings and correspondence, Mr. Lowell believed that he made good faith legal arguments based on the case law and acted at all times appropriately to vigorously defend his client.”
This comes on the heels of Hunter’s team dropping their own countersuit against the whistleblowers back in May.
That one accused Shapley and Ziegler of “targeted” leaks to embarrass Biden, ramping up the “stakes to unprecedented levels with their numerous public appearances.”
Details of the “Crooked Family”
The agents fired back hard: “It’s always been clear that the lawsuit was an attempt to intimidate us,” they said at the time. “However, we were always motivated by doing the right thing, defending our work, and honoring our duty to the American people.”
To understand why this matters, you have to rewind to the whistleblowers’ original bombshells.
In congressional testimony, they detailed how Special Counsel David Weiss—the guy tapped to lead the Hunter probe—claimed he was hamstrung in filing charges, despite Attorney General Merrick Garland insisting otherwise.
They recounted a Hunter business associate admitting to the FBI that Joe Biden popped in on a China deal at his son’s request.
And those “optics”? They allegedly killed a warrant for the Biden family storage space where key evidence sat.
Empower Oversight, the firm backing Shapley and Ziegler, didn’t mince words in May:
“Hunter Biden brought this lawsuit against two honorable federal agents in retaliation for blowing the whistle on the preferential treatment he was given by President Biden’s Department of Justice. Shapley and Ziegler did nothing wrong.”
Their February findings from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel backed that up, revealing “the IRS issued illegal gag orders and improperly removed them from the Hunter Biden investigation as reprisal for their protected disclosures.”
The saga ties into Hunter’s messy legal history. He cut a sweetheart plea deal in 2023 on tax and gun charges, only for it to implode under judicial scrutiny—fueled in no small part by these whistleblower revelations.
A Delaware jury convicted him on the gun counts in June 2024; he pled guilty to taxes in California that September.
Then, in a pre-emptive strike, outgoing President Biden issued a full pardon in December 2024, flipping his earlier pledge not to.
The agents’ response to the pardon was blunt: “No amount of lies or spin can hide the simple truth that the Justice Department nearly let the President’s son off the hook for multiple felonies.”
It’s No Wonder Trump Wants to Drain the Swamp
Fast-forward to March 2025, and under the new Trump administration, both got promotions at the IRS—a small win after years of retaliation.
But the whistleblowers’ story doesn’t stop at taxes. It loops in the infamous Hunter laptop, verified by the FBI in November 2019 but dismissed by 51 ex-intel officials in October 2020 as potential Russian disinformation—a letter later tied to Biden campaign nudges via Antony Blinken and Michael Morell.
Lowell himself leaned on the DOJ and Delaware AG in 2023 to probe laptop leakers, including those tied to CEFC China Energy—the very firm at the center of Hunter’s alleged schemes.
A DOJ watchdog report this year exposed how a convicted FBI counterintel chief, Charles McGonigal, tipped off CEFC about the probe, giving the Chinese outfit a heads-up.
What does this settlement mean going forward? For one, it quiets a legal front that’s dogged the Bidens for years, but it also validates the core of Shapley and Ziegler’s claims.
They weren’t leakers; they were watchdogs.
In a town where loyalty often trumps truth, this feels like a crack in the facade—one that might encourage more insiders to speak up.
As the dust settles, it’s worth asking: How many other probes got the kid-glove treatment, and who else is still waiting for their day in the sun?
Also Read: A DOJ Whistleblower Now Makes Revelation That Undermines the Judicial System’s Integrity
