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Hunter Biden abruptly dropped his lawsuit Wednesday against two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers who alleged a wide-ranging cover-up in the Department of Justice to stonewall the tax fraud investigation into him.
The Biden scion had slapped a lawsuit against the two whistleblowers in 2023, alleging that they “targeted and sought to embarrass Mr. Biden via public statements to the media in which they and their representatives disclosed confidential information about a private citizen’s tax matters.”
Without detailing a specific reason why, the scandal-scarred 55-year-old voluntarily moved to dismiss his lawsuit against Gary Shapley, who was an IRS supervisory special agent at the time in question, and Joe Ziegler, who was an agent.
“It’s always been clear that the lawsuit was an attempt to intimidate us,” the two men said in a statement. “Intimidation and retaliation were never going to work. We truly wanted our day in court to provide the complete story, but it appears Mr. Biden was afraid to actually fight this case in a court of law after all.”
“His voluntary dismissal of the case tells you everything you need to know about who was right and who was wrong.”
The dismissal comes about a month after Biden’s four attorneys on the lawsuit, Abbe David Lowell, Christopher Man, David Kolansky and Isabella Oishi filed a motion to withdraw as his counsel.
Shapley and Ziegler had complained to their chain of command about the handling of the government’s investigation into Biden. Eventually, they reached out to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), a federal watchdog and Republican lawmakers in Congress.
Shapley gave a public interview with CBS in May 2023, outlining his accusations that the Justice Department “slow-walked” the probe.
Later that year, the DOJ slapped charges against Biden after his plea deal and pretrial diversion agreement with the feds fell apart. The tax charges included nine counts alleging that he bilked Uncle Sam $1.4 million from 2016 to 2019. He later paid those taxes back.
Biden pleaded guilty to all counts last year and then his father, former President Joe Biden, granted his son a “full and unconditional” pardon.
Shapley and Ziegler’s legal team underscored that the former first son “dismissed his case with prejudice—meaning he can never bring it again” and did so “in exchange for nothing at all.”
“Hunter Biden brought this lawsuit against two honorable federal agents in retaliation for blowing the whistle on the preferential treatment he was given,” the lawyers said in a statement.
“Shapley and Ziegler did nothing wrong, never had to seek a pardon, and their actions have now been entirely vindicated once again.”
Earlier this month, President Trump briefly tapped Shapley to serve as the acting commissioner at the IRS before replacing him with Michael Faulkender.
The Post contacted attorneys for the Biden scion for comment.
