The IRS whistleblowers who first brought concerns to Congress about how the government handled the tax investigation into Hunter Biden filed an appeal Thursday with the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, requesting a hearing and seeking corrective action from the agencies that retaliated against them. 

The appeal was filed by lawyers for Empower Oversight, a whistleblower group representing IRS agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler in this case. They request that the MSPB conduct a hearing on the retaliation and order “appropriate corrective action” by the agencies that participated, according to the complaint reviewed by Just the News. 

The complaint alleges that the one or both of the whistleblowers faced retaliation in the form of “marginalization and isolation” in their workplace, removal from the Hunter Biden tax investigation, reduction of duties and responsibilities, and unreasonable scrutiny and delays to investigative requests. 

The move follows an earlier finding from the Office of Special Counsel, the agency responsible for ensuring the protection of whistleblowers, that the IRS wrongfully retaliated against its employees and may have violated federal law in doing so by trying to gag the agents from disclosing wrongdoing. 

The office, however, did not find in favor of the whistleblowers on claims that Shapley was passed over for a promotion and endured other retaliation, which prompted the appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board. 

The whistleblowers are seeking corrective actions from both the IRS and the Department of Justice for the retaliation that came after the agents made protected disclosures to Congress about political interference, potential conflicts of interest, and preferential treatment in the Hunter Biden tax investigation. 

Their disclosures blew up a planned plea deal that would have spared then-President Joe Biden’s son prison time. 

After the two decorated IRS agents provided public proof of political interference in the case, prosecutors brought two indictments against Hunter Biden and secured convictions on multiple tax and guns charges. The younger Biden was facing sentencing and the possibility of prison time when his father issued controversial pardons in early December wiping out the convictions. 

Yet no corrective action has been taken by the tax agency or the Department of Justice, despite the finding from the OSC showing that the IRS had in fact retaliated against the whistleblowers by removing them from the investigation and other efforts to discourage their lawful disclosures to Congress,  

Shapley and Ziegler continue to work at the IRS under the same leadership that they allege participated in the retaliatory measures against them following their disclosures. 

In a letter earlier this month to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Empower Oversight lawyer Tristan Leavitt brought these concerns to Congress. 

“This system of whistleblower protections is utterly broken,” Leavitt wrote the senator. “These dedicated public servants have done everything by the book, consistent with their oaths to uphold the law. Yet, they have been left twisting in the wind at the mercies of those who retaliated against them, waiting endlessly for administrative and legal processes that should have vindicated them long ago.

“If real corrective action is not taken soon, the message to future whistleblowers will be crystal clear: keep your mouth shut,” he added. “If IRS senior management can bully and ruin the careers of these public servants with no consequence for the retaliators and no meaningful remedy for the whistleblowers, no one will ever speak up again.”