Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made an impromptu visit to the IRS Thursday, six days after commissioner Billy Long was ousted by the president for unexplained reasons, the sixth tax chief to bite the dust this year.
In his first visit as acting commissioner, Bessent spent 45 minutes in the building to reassure the troops that he is hands-on and taking charge of the organization after a period of uncertainty.
But the two visitors he brought with him sent an even stronger message: IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler, who testified to Congress last year about the corrupted investigation into Hunter Biden, strode into the building side by side with Bessent.
They are now advisers to the Secretary, focused on integrity and reform to ensure all taxpayers are treated the same.
“By visiting the building with Shapley and Ziegler, Secretary Bessent is sending a message to IRS Personnel that he is hands-on acting chief, focused on implementation of OBBB [tax cuts in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act] and long overdue modernization,” said a Treasury spokesperson.
The Secretary reiterated his three priorities for the IRS: cost savings, privacy, and customer service.
For Shapley and Ziegler, it was a sweet return to the organization that they felt had retaliated against them after they blew the whistle. Bessent introduced them to the senior leaders in the commissioner’s office recently vacated by Long.
It was due to the pair’s protected whistleblower disclosures that Hunter’s sweetheart deal with the DOJ blew up.
It was their investigatory work that was ultimately used in the criminal charges against Hunter, who was found guilty of gun felonies by a jury in Delaware and pleaded guilty to tax fraud in California, but was granted a presidential pardon by his father, Joe Biden, before he was sentenced.
“It’s always nice being with the Secretary,” said Shapley. “But I think it shows he supports us and values the work we are doing.
“We have been ruffling some feathers, shaking some boxes with rattlesnakes in them to find efficiencies and make the tough decisions so we can present a streamlined fighting machine, not the bloated bureaucracy that exists …
“We take high-priority issues directly to the Secretary, and he’s 100% engaged.”
Bessent also paid tribute to former Commissioner Long, who is set to become US Ambassador to Iceland, describing the former Missouri congressman as “indispensable in the effort to depoliticize the IRS and ensure that the agency treats all taxpayers equally under the law.
“Joe Ziegler and Gary Shapley are operating in senior roles to move this effort forward, and I commend them for their exemplary work.”
Critics of President Trump’s efforts to modernize the IRS warned of a 10% shortfall in receipts. Instead, April receipts this year were up 9.5% over the previous year. And receipts in May were up 14.7% over the previous year.
The agency has collected a total of $2.04 trillion this filing season — $100 billion more than last year.