The Vindication of the IRS Whistleblowers

Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler are finally rewarded for their integrity and dedication to service

By Kimberley A. Strassel. Excerpts:

"That is what’s happened in the case of Messrs. Shapley and Ziegler, veteran civil servants who were promoted this week to senior jobs, advising Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on IRS reform. This comes after years of retaliation, for their sin of treating Hunter Biden like any other lawbreaker—for doing their job well—and for calling foul when colleagues put politics ahead of honest work.

To reprise: Mr. Shapley was an experienced IRS agent when brought in to supervise the Biden investigation in 2020. Under him was the similarly experienced Mr. Ziegler, who’d initiated the Hunter tax case around 2018 after viewing suspicious accounts. Mr. Ziegler had already encountered political interference, including a decision to park the tax case with David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware, even though Hunter filed taxes in California and the District of Columbia."

"Mr. Shapley’s team was thwarted in attempts to search Joe Biden’s guest house (Hunter’s onetime residence) and a storage facility containing Hunter business documents. The team was instructed not to ask questions about Joe or pursue leads connected to Joe’s grandchildren. It was slow-walked, made to ignore campaign-finance allegations and to strip Hunter’s name from document requests. FBI headquarters even tipped Hunter’s people to a coming round of interviews"

"Mr. Shapley testified that in an October 2022 meeting, Mr. Weiss stunned investigators by saying there would be no tax charges because he was “not the deciding person.” The U.S. attorneys for D.C. and central California, Biden appointees, refused to bring them."