While admitting that, in fact, the "laptop from hell" belonged to their client, lawyers for Hunter Biden are now claiming that it was criminal to “weaponize” its contents.
The legal team is calling on prosecutors to launch criminal investigations into those who accessed and disseminated Hunter Biden's personal data from the laptop said to document numerous violations of law.
In a 14-page letter to Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, attorney Abbe Lowell claimed that repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac “unlawfully” accessed the laptop data and worked with President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to “weaponize” sordid and incriminating contents on it against Joe Biden, the New York Post reported on Feb. 1.
“This failed dirty political trick directly resulted in the exposure, exploitation, and manipulation of Mr. Biden’s private and personal information,” Lowell wrote. “Mr. Mac Isaac’s intentional, reckless, and unlawful conduct allowed for hundreds of gigabytes of Mr. Biden’s personal data, without any discretion, to be circulated around the Internet.”
Related: Marco Polo investigation reports 459 documented violations of law on Hunter Biden’s laptop, October 20, 2022
Related: Biden Laptop Emails data base (has been visited by thousands of anxious individuals)
Hunter Biden and his lawyers have in the past tried to sow doubt that the allegedly water-damaged laptop abandoned at Mac Isaac’s shop belonged to Hunter.
“There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me,” Hunter Biden told CBS during a 2021 interview. “It could be that I was hacked. It could be that it was then — that it was Russian intelligence. It could be that it was stolen from me.”
In admitting that the laptop was Hunter Biden's, Lowell’s letter to the Delaware AG singles out Mac Isaac, Giuliani and his personal lawyer Robert Costello, Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon, Trump White House aide Garrett Ziegler, Bannon associate Jack Maxey, and Yaacov Apelbaum, founder and CEO of cyber analytics firm XRVision and former aide to Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. The letter alleges those individuals gained unauthorized access to the laptop’s contents and disseminated it to the media and lawmakers.
“We believe that the facts and circumstances merit further investigation as to whether the conduct of Messrs. Mac Isaac, Costello, Giuliani, Bannon, Ziegler, Maxey, and Apelbaum violated several provisions of Delaware’s criminal code — including, but not necessarily limited to, computer-related property offenses … theft … possession of stolen property … and misapplication of another’s property … Each of these offenses, if violated, has the potential to be a felony, depending on the value of the property in question,” the letter states.
Costello told The Post that Lowell’s allegations were “ridiculous” and a sign of “desperation.”
Ziegler, who founded the Marco Polo website which posted the laptop's contents, noted in a Telegram post: "Typical Bolshevik lawfare. Will be responding in full and in kind."
Ziegler told The Post that the letters were a “desperate attempt” by the Biden family to get the spotlight away from “their crimes.”
“With respect to the letters from the president’s son pleading with his daddy’s agencies to target those who expose his blatant criminality, Kevin Morris did not get a lot of bang for his buck,” Ziegler told The Post, referencing Hunter Biden’s fixer and “sugar brother” Kevin Morris, who allegedly lent the president’s son $2 million to help pay off his overdue federal taxes and has become the architect of Hunter Biden’s legal and media strategy.
“You’d think that Morris would spend $1,400-plus an hour on an actual tax attorney when funding Hunter’s legal misadventures, which Abbe Lowell is not,” Ziegler said. “The letter to the IRS about Marco Polo is full of speculations and basic misunderstandings about the case law surrounding 501(c)(3) organizations. Hopefully, federal and state investigators will see this for what it is: a desperate attempt by Hunter and his family to get the attention off of their crimes.”
Letters were also sent by Hunter Biden’s legal team on Wednesday to the Department of Justice’s National Security Division and the IRS.
“I think with Congress starting investigations next week, it’s a scare tactic,” Mac Isaac told The Post. “The flak is heaviest when you are over the target!”
Costello pointed out that Mac Isaac has a “signed work order that gives [him] authorization to examine the hard drive and the property is deemed legally abandoned after 90 days. It is the property of John Paul Mac Isaac.”
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, Kentucky Republican, told the National Press Club on Jan. 30 that Oversight is set to begin hearings next week on Hunter Biden’s alleged influence peddling, and claims he cashed in on ties to his then-vice president father to rake in millions from foreign companies.
NEW: Hunter Biden’s lawyers, in a newly aggressive strategy, today sent a series of blistering letters to state and federal prosecutors urging criminal investigations into those who accessed and disseminated his personal data. https://t.co/Bo5yRjkx5G
— Matt Viser (@mviser) February 1, 2023
Action . . . . Intelligence . . . . Publish
