Hunter Biden is voluntarily dismissing his lawsuit against the IRS claiming whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler illegally disclosed private taxpayer information.

Biden sued the IRS after Ziegler and Shapley publicly accused IRS and Department of Justice officials of slow-walking the investigation into his alleged tax violations.

“It’s always been clear that the lawsuit was an attempt to intimidate us. However, we were always motivated by doing the right thing, defending our work, and honoring our duty to the American people. Intimidation and retaliation were never going to work,” Shapley and Ziegler said in a statement.

“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.”

Before the suit was dismissed, Shapley and Ziegler were attempting to become defendants in the lawsuit to better defend themselves against Biden’s claims of illegal conduct. The whistleblowers were represented by a group of seven attorneys with experience in federal prosecutions, the DOJ Tax Division, White House, and both congressional chambers.

“Today, in the midst of Gary Shapley’s and Joe Ziegler’s efforts to intervene in this litigation and in exchange for nothing at all, Hunter Biden dismissed his case with prejudice—meaning he can never bring it again,” the IRS whistleblowers’s legal teams said in a statement.

“Shapley and Ziegler did nothing wrong, never had to seek a pardon, and the legality of their actions have now been entirely vindicated in a federal court of law once again.”

The widely publicized lawsuit was part of Biden’s aggressive legal strategy against his political opponents amid the firestorm created by the IRS whistleblower allegations and the House GOP’s broader investigation into his foreign business dealings. The Republican impeachment inquiry against then-President Joe Biden focused mostly on his role in his son’s business enterprise and Shapley and Ziegler’s whistleblower disclosures.

In March, the younger Biden dropped a similarly frivolous lawsuit against former Trump staffer Garrett Ziegler over a public database Ziegler created with emails, images, and texts from Biden’s laptop and iPhone. Biden said in court papers he is struggling financially because his book and art sales have dried up since late 2023, a time period coinciding with the House GOP investigation and special counsel David Weiss’s prosecution of Biden on gun and tax charges.

The impeachment inquiry found over $27 million of payments from foreign sources to Hunter Biden and his business associates during and after his father’s vice presidency. The investigation also documented numerous interactions between Joe Biden and his son’s business partners, and it confirmed the veracity of Shapley and Ziegler’s allegations. In addition to several rounds of testimony, the IRS whistleblowers provided hundreds of pages worth of documents to the House Ways and Means Committee to substantiate their accusations.

Shapley and Ziegler first came forward in spring 2023 and both suffered unlawful retaliation from the IRS as a result, an independent watchdog investigation recently concluded. The Trump administration promoted them both in March to senior advisor roles at the Treasury Department. For a brief period last month, Shapley was acting IRS Commissioner but got removed from the position amid a dispute between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and billionaire Elon Musk.

President Trump has also removed Hunter Biden’s Secret Service detail and granted clemency to two of his former business partners, Devon Archer and Jason Galanis, both of whom testified before Congress during the Biden impeachment probe.

At the end of his presidency, Joe Biden pardoned his son ahead of his sentencing dates on the gun and tax charges. Biden was convicted on the gun charges in June and pleaded guilty to the tax charges in September rather than go to trial again. On his last day in office, Joe Biden granted pardons to other family members to protect them from any possible actions by the Trump administration.