A lawyer for President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, urged state and federal agencies in a letter on Feb. 1 to probe what he said were attempts by close allies of former President Donald Trump and others to “weaponize” the contents of a laptop that an electronics repair shop owner says was dropped off at his Delaware store in 2019.
The letters from Hunter Biden’s attorneys mark the first time he and his legal team have publicly acknowledged that it was his personal data found on the laptop.
The letters were sent by Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell to the Delaware attorney general, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
They call for an investigation into former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, campaign lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, as well as Giuliani’s own lawyer, Robert Costello, and the owner of the Wilmington computer repair shop, John Paul Mac Isaac, who said Hunter Biden dropped a laptop off at his store in April 2019 and failed to return to pick it up.
“We write on behalf of our client, Robert Hunter Biden, to request an investigation into the following individuals for whom there is considerable reason to believe violated various federal laws in accessing, copying, manipulating, and/or disseminating Mr. Biden’s personal computer data,” states the letter (pdf) to the DOJ’s top national security official, Matthew Olsen.
The letter goes on to claim that Mac Isaac “unlawfully accessed Hunter Biden’s personal data” and distributed its contents to “the political enemies of Mr. Biden’s father without Mr. Biden’s consent,” including the New York Post.
It adds that toward the end of the 2020 presidential election campaign, Mac Isaac “chose to work with President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer to weaponize Mr. Biden’s personal computer data against his father, Joseph R. Biden, by unlawfully causing the provision of Mr. Biden’s personal data to the New York Post.”
Data Was ‘Unlawfully Accessed, Manipulated,’ Lawyers Say
“This failed dirty political trick directly resulted in the exposure, exploitation, and manipulation of Mr. Biden’s private and personal information. Mr. Mac Isaac’s intentional, reckless, and likely unlawful conduct allowed for hundreds of gigabytes of Mr. Biden’s personal data, without any discretion, to be circulated around the Internet. Politicians and the news media have used this unlawfully accessed, copied, distributed, and manipulated data to distort the truth and cause harm to Mr. Biden.”
The letter cites potential violations of an array of statutes prohibiting the unauthorized access of a computer or stored electronic communication, as well as the transport of stolen data across state lines and the publication of restricted personal data with the intent to intimidate or threaten.
The letter also states that Mac Isaac also allegedly “shared a copy of the hard drive with Rudy Giuliani, after a tip from Mr. Mac Isaac to one of Mr. Giuliani’s assistants.”
“Mr. Giuliani then distributed a copy to Steve Bannon (on September 28, 2020, Mr. Bannon claimed he had a copy),” the lawyers said. “In addition, Mr. Giuliani, working with his friend and former New York police chief Bernard Kerik, gave a copy of a hard drive to Garrett Ziegler, a former aide to Trump White House official Peter Navarro. On October 11, 2020, Mr. Giuliani provided a copy of Mr. Biden’s computer data to the New York Post.”
“Mr. Biden did not consent to Messrs. Mac Isaac, Giuliani, or Costello providing his computer data to any third parties, including the New York Post,” the lawyers wrote.
The New York Post published the Biden laptop story in the weeks before the 2020 election. At the time, the publication reported that the laptop had been allegedly seized by the FBI and a copy of the files given to Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, by Mac Isaac.
The story was quickly suppressed on various social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, and many media outlets attempted to play it off as Russian disinformation meant to damage Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
Mac Isaac noted to the New York Post that the letter was delivered as House Republicans are readying to open probes into Hunter Biden.
“I think with Congress starting investigations next week, it’s a scare tactic,” Mac Isaac said. “The flak is heaviest when you are over the target!”
‘These Facts and Circumstances Merit Further Investigation’
Costello, when asked to comment on behalf of himself and Giuliani, said the letter was a “frivolous legal document” that “reeks of desperation because they know judgment day is coming for the Bidens.”
“We believe that these facts and circumstances merit further investigation as to whether the conduct of Messrs. Mac Isaac, Costello, Giuliani, Bannon, Ziegler, Maxey, and Apelbaum violated federal law,” Lowell concluded in the letter.
The letter does not necessarily mean that federal prosecutors or law enforcement agencies will open an investigation into the claims or take any other actions.
Hunter Biden currently faces an ongoing federal criminal probe into his tax affairs for at least two years.
In a separate letter, Hunter Biden’s attorneys also asked Fox News host Tucker Carlson to immediately retract and apologize for what they said were “false and defamatory statements” he made in a story presented on air.
The story, according to the younger Biden’s lawyers, was about Hunter “paying ‘rent’ to his father, President Joseph Biden, in what Mr. Carlson implied was essentially a money laundering scheme to finance President Biden’s lifestyle prior to his election as President after legitimately defeating Donald Trump and alluding to Mr. Biden having unauthorized access to classified documents because of his presence at President Biden’s house.”
“These statements are false and have no factual support whatsoever,” the lawyers said.
The Epoch Times has contacted a lawyer representing Bannon and representatives of Fox News for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times