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Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler first burst into the spotlight when they came forward as whistleblowers in the Hunter Biden tax evasion case. It was 2023, and as they told the story, interference by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department had kept the case from proceeding—a case the IRS investigators had taken years to build.
Although the two men weren’t fired after blowing the whistle, they were “sidelined and targeted,” according to Jason Foster, the founder of Empower Oversight, a nonprofit legal group that protects whistleblowers and who represented Shapley and Ziegler. They were removed from the case.
But in July 2023, Shapley and Ziegler testified before the Republican-led House Oversight Committee in Congress. Five months later, Hunter was indicted for failing to pay $1.4 million in income tax. He pleaded guilty in September 2024, only to have his father pardon him over a month and a half before he left office—an action he had repeatedly said he would never take, and which was widely criticized.
“He wouldn’t have had to pardon him if we hadn’t come forward and provided the truth to the American people,” Shapley told me recently. “I did what was right.”
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