Hunter Biden on Wednesday dropped the lawsuit he filed against two Internal Revenue Service whistle-blowers in September 2023.
Biden’s attorneys brought a motion in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning the case cannot be brought again in any court.
The lawsuit, initially filed by the former first son two years ago, alleged that IRS Special Agent Gary Shapley and IRS Criminal Investigator Joseph Ziegler had ‘targeted and sought to embarrass’ Biden through statements to the media disclosing the details of the tax matters of a ‘private citizen.’
Shapley and Zielger had testified before the House Oversight Committee earlier that year, saying they faced various limitations when tasked with investigating former President Joe Biden’s son.
‘It’s always been clear that the lawsuit was an attempt to intimidate us,’ Shapley and Zielger said in a statement after Hunter Biden dropped the case, according to the New York Post. ‘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,’ they added.
Lawyers for the two whistle-blowers first emphasized how Hunter Biden ‘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 attorneys said, according to the Post.
Four of Hunter Biden’s attorneys – Abbe David Lowell, Christopher Man, David Kolansky and Isabella Oishi – moved to withdraw as the former first son’s counsel about a month ago.
The Justice Department had been investigating Hunter Biden for several years for possible tax crimes when Shapley’s lawyers sent a letter to Congress alleging ‘irregularities’ in the DOJ handling of the investigation, and he sat down with CBS News in May 2023 about his decision to blow the whistle.
Hunter Biden’s plea deal, which would have granted him broad immunity from prosection in exchange for admitting guilt to two misdemeanor tax counts, fell apart during a July 2023 federal court hearing in Delaware.
Hunter Biden later pleaded guilty in September 2024 to all nine federal tax charges brought against him by special counsel David Weiss. It was determined that Biden failed to pay $1.4 million in taxes from 2016 to 2019. He later paid it back.
In December, former President Biden granted his son a sweeping pardon, granting Hunter clemency from all crimes he ‘has committed or may have committed’ over the past decade.