Veteran IRS agents who came forward as whistleblowers, alleging delays and hindrances in tax investigations involving Hunter Biden, have seen their defamation lawsuit against Biden’s prominent lawyer, Abbe Lowell, dismissed. A federal judge ruled that allowing them to revise their complaint would be “futile.”

Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, appointed by George W. Bush, determined that Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler did not successfully demonstrate that Lowell made defamatory remarks or acted with actual malice. The judge referred to Lowell’s “aggressive” letters to Congress, which accused the agents of illegally leaking grand jury and tax information, as part of his defense strategy.

Judge Leon noted that Lowell’s comments were not standalone accusations but were instead part of a reasoned, though assertive, defense strategy for Biden. He described Lowell’s statements as “constitutionally protected legal opinions” made within a government context during a “highly charged criminal investigation.”

During the summer of 2023, Shapley and Ziegler made waves, whether in numerous media interviews or testimony before Congress, alleging that “unethical slow-walking and preferential treatment” and “deviations from the normal investigative process” made it impossible to bring felony tax evasion and “fraud or false statements” charges connected to Hunter Biden’s business dealings with the Ukrainian gas company Burisma while his father Joe Biden was the vice president of the United States.

In response, Biden, with Lowell’s legal expertise, has initiated lawsuits against the IRS and the agents, challenging the “unauthorized” release of his tax information.

Shapley and Ziegler argued in their defamation case that Lowell “falsely and maliciously accused” them of crimes, specifically the illegal disclosure of grand jury and taxpayer information, asserting that they only discussed information that was already public.

However, Judge Leon concluded that their case lacked sufficient grounds, leading to its dismissal and denying them the opportunity to amend their claims.

Norm Eisen, left, and Abbe Lowell attorneys of Lisa Cook, a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, walk out of the federal courthouse in Washington, Friday, Aug. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

“Our system of justice is adversarial, and the reader expects that criminal defense attorneys are not neutral arbiters!” Leon said, with emphasis. “While that does not give an attorney a free pass to say whatever he pleases, Lowell provides the reader with the legal and factual bases for his statements, and the reader would understand, and expect, that Biden’s attorneys were advancing a legal position that was advantageous for their client.”

In a statement to Law&Crime, Shapley and Ziegler maintained they “did [their] duties as loyal public servants,” that they “legally blew the whistle when Hunter Biden almost escaped prosecution for his crimes because he was the President’s son,” and that they had to sue Lowell “because he falsely accused us of committing serious felonies in retaliation.”

“Since then, Biden pled guilty to his crimes and has been pardoned. He also dropped his lawsuit against the IRS targeting us for our protected disclosures,” they said. “We have recently concluded settlement agreements of our claims that the DOJ and IRS illegally retaliated against us for blowing the whistle on the improper politicization of that case.”

Those settlements, Shapley and Ziegler said, led to “substantial compensation for the harm we suffered” and the DOJ’s agreement to “use this example to train all federal prosecutors for years to come, so other brave civil servants are not victimized the way we were.”

Shapley and Ziegler added that while they haven’t yet decided whether they will appeal the dismissal, they “disagree that Lowell’s attack was just his opinion” and said “the record speaks for itself about what we did, who Biden is, and the value of Lowell’s so-called opinion.”

Lowell currently represents New York’s Democratic Attorney General Letitia James in her bank fraud prosecution and Federal Reserve Board governor Lisa Cook. He previously represented Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, and represented Hunter Biden in tax and gun prosecutions before then-President Biden pardoned his son of his crimes.

The opinion from Leon hit the docket one day after the Wall Street Journal reported that the IRS intends to shake up its criminal division to potentially make it easier for the agency to pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups.

Shapley — the onetime acting commissioner of the IRS turned IRS Criminal Investigation deputy chief and senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — is said to be a driving force behind the proposed changes, according to the WSJ report.