Responding to a libel suit brought by the Delaware-based computer repairman they claim was behind the iconic laptop controversy in the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Hunter’s attorneys Biden submitted his response and counterclaims citing an invasion of privacy.
The move marks a significant increase in the younger Biden’s increasingly assertive legal strategy against some of his most vocal critics and those accused of trafficking in his personal information.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Delaware and is against John Paul Mac Isaac, a computer repairman who allegedly obtained and then shared data from a laptop that supposedly belonged to the president’s son in April 2019. counterclaim is in response to an ongoing defamation lawsuit that Mac Isaac filed in October 2019 against Hunter Biden and others.
“[Hunter] Biden had more than a reasonable expectation of privacy that any data he created or maintained … would not be viewed, copied, disseminated, or placed on the Internet for others to use against him or his family or to that the public can see them,” according to the countersuit.
Hunter Biden’s legal team disputed Mac Isaac’s claim that the laptop and an external hard drive were given to him when Hunter Biden failed to retrieve them within 90 days of leaving them behind. Wilmington, Delaware, repairman’s shop for maintenance. They did so by pointing to the fine print of a repair order that Hunter Biden allegedly signed at the time.
Contrary to Mac Isaac’s Authorization to Repair form, tangible personal property in Delaware is declared abandoned when the rightful owner does not “claim or declare title to the property for a period of ‘one year,’ according to legal documents from Biden’s team.
“Other responsibilities must also be fulfilled before obtaining lawful title,” the complaint continues, “such as the delivery of notice to the owner by the court and the posting by the petitioner of a notice in five places public or more, and the publication of the petition in a newspaper”.
Hunter Biden is suing Mac Isaac for an indefinite amount of “compensatory damages” and a jury trial. A request for comment was not immediately answered by a lawyer for Mac Isaac.
The younger Biden, who until recently had generally avoided public disputes over his financial dealings, took an increasingly confrontational legal stance with Friday’s complaint.
Hunter Biden’s revamped legal team, under renowned criminal defense attorney Abbe Lowell, has issued a flurry of cease-and-desist letters and threatened legal action against some of his most vocal critics, including Mac Isaac, in recent months.
In the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, when images, emails and text messages purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden surfaced in public and sparked national conversation as voters headed to the polls, the fixer of computers has become a central figure in the drama surrounding Biden’s laptop.
Hunter Biden visited Mac Isaac’s computer repair business on April 12, 2019, with three broken devices, according to statements provided by Mac Isaac and his attorney, and inquired about the possibility of data recovery. Hunter Biden was instructed to return to the store a few days later to pick up the gadgets and pay an $85 service fee, according to Mac Isaac. Hunter Biden reportedly never responded to Mac Isaac, and the bill was never paid.
According to Mac Isaac and his lawyer, the abandoned laptop passed into Mac Isaac’s possession after 90 days in accordance with the employment contract that Hunter Biden allegedly signed when he initially went to Mac Isaac’s store.
Mac After giving the laptop and external hard drive to the FBI in December 2019, Isaac attempted to share the devices’ information with Rudy Giuliani, personal attorney for then-President Donald Trump. Giuliani then made the device information available to other Trump supporters and some media outlets in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election.
Along with Rep. Adam Schiff, Politico and CNN, Mac Isaac first filed a defamation lawsuit against Hunter Biden in Delaware state court. The case moved to the U.S. District Court in Delaware earlier this month, where Hunter Biden filed his lawsuit.
Hunter Biden’s attorneys have refuted Mac Isaac’s claim that he handled the data discovered on the laptop and hard drive lawfully and responsibly in their countersuit.
“IT companies and reputable repair professionals generally destroy personal data included in trade-in, left-behind, or abandoned devices,” the attorneys said. They don’t open, copy or give this information to other people like Mac Isaac did in this case.