Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, departs federal court after a plea hearing on two misdemeanor charges of willfully failing to pay income taxes in Wilmington, Delaware, July 26, 2023.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Hunter Biden on Tuesday sued former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his companies and another attorney over alleged violations of computer fraud and data access related to a laptop computer Biden is said to have left at a Delaware repair shop.
“Defendants are among those who have been primarily responsible for what has been described as the ‘total annihilation’ of Plaintiff’s digital privacy,” Biden’s suit in Los Angeles federal court says.
“They also are among those who have been primarily responsible for the ‘total annihilation’ of Plaintiff’s data.”
Biden, son of President Joe Biden, since 2020 has been the target of attacks by Giuliani, former President Donald Trump, Republican members of Congress and conservative media outlets over the alleged contents of that computer.
Giuliani delivered information allegedly gleaned from Biden’s laptop to the New York Post, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., in October 2020, a month before the election between Trump and Joe Biden.
The Post then published a story based on that data, which suggested that President Biden may have attended a meeting with a representative of a Ukrainian company that employed Hunter.
Claims that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s allegedly corrupt business dealings, which are in part based on information from the laptop, are the focus of an impeachment inquiry into the Democratic president by GOP-run House committees.
Hunter Biden’s lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court also names as a defendant Robert Costello, an attorney and former federal prosecutor who previously represented Giuliani.
The suit says, “For the past many months and even years, Defendants have dedicated an extraordinary amount of time and energy toward looking for, hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating, and generally obsessing over data that they were given that was taken or stolen from Plaintiff’s devices or storage platforms, including what Defendants claim to have obtained from Plaintiff’s alleged ‘laptop’ computer.”
The suit also says Biden’s data was “manipulated, altered and damaged” before it was copied and sent to Giuliani and Costello.
And it accuses them of being involved in “further alterations and damage to the data” that currently is unknown to Biden.
In a footnote, the suit says, “This is not an admission by Plaintiff that [Delaware computer repair shop owner] John Paul Mac Isaac (or others) in fact possessed any particular laptop containing electronically stored data belonging to” Biden
“Rather, Plaintiff simply acknowledges that at some point, Mac Isaac obtained electronically stored data, some of which belonged to Plaintiff,” the footnote goes on to say.
Hunter Biden was indicted in Delaware federal court this month on several criminal charges related to his purchase and possession of a handgun while being a user of illegal drugs. He previously was charged with two counts of failure to pay federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018.
Last week, Biden sued the IRS for what he alleges is the “unlawful disclosure of Mr. Biden’s confidential tax return information” by IRS agents who revealed that information to the media to embarrass him.
Giuliani and Costello did not immediately respond to requests for comment.