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A lawyer for President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, asked the Justice Department in a letter Wednesday to investigate a close ally of former president Donald Trump and others who accessed and distributed personal data from a laptop that the owner of a computer repair shop said was thrown away at his home. Delaware shops in 2019.
The request for a criminal investigation, which comes as Hunter Biden faces a tax evasion investigation by the Justice Department, does not mean federal prosecutors will open an investigation or take other action. Instead, it represented a rare change of strategy and public response by the younger Biden and his legal team to years of attacks by Republican officials and the right-wing media.
It also represents the latest salvo in the long-running laptop saga, which began with a New York Post story in October 2020 that detailed several emails found on devices related to Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. It was quickly seized upon by Trump as a campaign issue during that year’s presidential election.
The letter, signed by prominent Washington lawyer Abbe Lowell, seeks an investigation into, among others, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, Trump’s longtime lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Giuliani’s own lawyer and the owner of a Wilmington computer repair shop, John Paul Mac Isaac, who has spoken out. Hunter Biden dropped his laptop at the store in April 2019 and never returned to retrieve it.
The letter cited excerpts from Mac Isaac’s book, in which he admitted to examining personal and sensitive material from Biden’s laptop, including a file titled “income.pdf.” It noted that Mac Isaac sent a copy of the laptop data to Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, who then shared it with Giuliani, a close Trump ally who at the time was pushing the discredited theory about the younger Biden.
Giuliani provided the information to a reporter at the New York Post, who first wrote about the laptop, and also to Bannon, according to the letter. Hunter Biden never consented to having his personal information accessed or shared in that way, his lawyer said.
“This failed dirty political trick directly led to the exposure, exploitation and manipulation of Mr. Biden’s private and personal information,” the letter said. “Politicians and the news media used the data they accessed, copied, distributed and manipulated illegally to distort the truth and cause harm to Mr. Biden.”
Plea ‘reeks of desperation’: Giuliani’s lawyer
Mac Isaac declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press on Wednesday afternoon. Costello, asked to comment on behalf of himself and Giuliani, called the letter “a frivolous legal document” and said it “reeks of desperation knowing judgment day is coming for the Bidens.”
A lawyer who represented Bannon at the trial in Washington, DC, last year did not immediately return calls seeking comment. A Fox News representative had no immediate comment.
The letter to the Department of Justice stated the possible violation of the statute that prohibits the unauthorized access of computers or stored electronic communications, as well as the transport of stolen data across state lines and the publication of restricted personal data with the purpose of intimidating or threatening.
It also asked prosecutors to investigate whether any data was manipulated or destroyed in any way.
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You may have heard of Hunter Biden’s laptop. The laptop and data related to the youngest son of US President Joe Biden first appeared in public just a few weeks before the 2020 presidential election. At the time, it was widely discredited as foreign intervention and a disinformation campaign intended to disrupt the presidential race. Since then, several media outlets have verified that at least some of the data on the laptop is real. Meanwhile, the laptop has taken on a life of its own. Depending on who you ask, this is a distraction, or the key to uncovering stories of political corruption and unknown transactions abroad. New York Magazine reporters Olivia Nuzzi and Andrew Rice spent six months looking for the laptop: what was on it, the characters responsible for its public release, and the legal investigation that was underway. Today, Andrew Rice joins us to share what he found.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
Separate letters calling for an investigation were also sent to the Delaware state attorney general’s office and the Internal Revenue Service. A spokesman there did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
Hunter Biden, who turns 53 later this week, sent a laptop as he struggled with substance abuse, which he later wrote in his 2021 memoir. Good Good.
Twitter handled the laptop story before the committee
Scrutiny of Hunter Biden is expected to continue now that Republicans have taken the House.
A former Twitter employee is expected to testify next week before a House oversight committee about the social media platform’s handling of reports on laptops. Twitter initially blocked the New York Post article from its site.
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Matt Galloway talks to Hunter Biden about his new book, Beautiful Things, about his experience of tragedy and trauma from his childhood, his continuing addiction problems — and how it all turned into his father’s fight to become president of the United States.
Republicans say the story was suppressed for political reasons ahead of the 2020 election, though no evidence has been released to support the claim. The story can be accessed on other social media platforms.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO at the time, later characterized the article’s URL blocking with “zero context” as to why the decision was made as “unacceptable.”
In addition to the contents of the laptop, Republicans have questioned Hunter Biden’s work at a Ukrainian energy company and his business dealings with China while his father was in a position of influence.
More recently, since Joe Biden’s property has been searched for secret documents, some Republican members of Congress have questioned whether Hunter has access to one of them, showing the Wilmington, Del., home listed as Hunter Biden’s address on his driver’s license as recently as 2018.
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