The Office of Special Counsel has concluded that the Internal Revenue Service improperly removed agents from the Hunter Biden case, and then issued illegal gag orders to keep them quiet.

The information comes from a letter Tristan Leavitt, chief of Empower Oversight, wrote to Sen. Chuck Grassley, chief of the Senate’s committee on the judiciary.

It involves retaliation against IRS agents who had been assigned to work on the Hunter Biden case, then removed.

Hunter Biden has been involved in a long list of criminal counts in recent years. He was convicted by a jury in a case involving his illegal purchase of a gun, and he later pleaded guilty to a long list of tax charges that erupted when he refused to pay income taxes on massive amounts of revenue.

There had been evidence of political influences on the cases as they developed.

His father, Joe Biden, then issued a presidential pardon granting him a free pass on the offenses.

Now a letter to Grassley, from Empower, explains that it filed a whistleblower retaliation complaint with the Office of Special Counsel on behalf of IRS Agent Gary Shapley 20 months ago. IRS Agent Joseph Ziegler filed a similar complaint.

“These career law enforcement officers alleged that the IRS improperly removed them from the Hunter Biden investigation in retaliation for their protected whistleblower disclosures. The removal also extended to the entire IRS International Tax and Financial Crimes (“ITFC”) group led by SSA Shapley, including case agent SA Ziegler. At long last, the career nonpartisan staff at OSC responsible for investigating whistleblower retaliation has finally reached some conclusions. OSC confirmed in a December 30, 2024 email to counsel for the whistleblowers that it found the IRS issued illegal gag orders and improperly removed them from the Hunter Biden investigation as reprisal for their protected disclosures.”

A report at Just the News explained the two agents “blew the whistle on political interference in the Hunter Biden criminal investigation” and then the IRS “wrongly retaliated.”

That included the agency’s later communications “prohibiting them from further communicating concerns about wrongdoing and political meddling in the case.”

In fact, the OSC said, “[W]e believe certain IRS communications violated 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(13). In addition, at this point, we believe IRS cannot support Mr. Shapley’s removal the criminal investigation of a high-profile subject.”

The OSC said it couldn’t substantiate that Shapley then wrongly was passed over for a promotion, but it did find, “SSA Shapley CAUGHT his supervisor altering the dates of SSA Shapley’s communications to slow-walk them and make it appear to others in the agency like SSA Shapley was only making last-minute requests,” according to Leavitt.

Leavitt said some findings will be appealed to the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, a personnel agency for federal employees.

The report described the result as a “major win for the whistleblowers, whose protected disclosures to the House Ways and Means Committee transformed the Biden family corruption investigation and blew up a planned plea deal that would have spared President Joe Biden’s son prison time.”

That deal was a plea bargain that was worked out in his gun case, a bargain that a federal judge rejected as being too lenient.

That plea bargain, of course, was made completely unnecessary by Joe Biden’s later issuance of a blanket pardon.

The OSC findings also have raised concerns that the IRS tried to gag Ziegler and Shapley.

In fact, one IRS email claimed, “There should be no instances where case-related activity discussions leave this field office without seeking approval from your direct report.”

Leavitt also urged Grassley to pressure the new Trump Justice Department to pursue prosecutions and other forms of accountability on those who interfered in the Hunter Biden case or retaliated against the whistleblowers, the report explained.

“If real corrective action is not taken soon, the message to future whistleblowers will be crystal clear: keep your mouth shut,” Leavitt wrote. “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.”