Calls for criminal probe into attempts to ‘weaponize’ contents
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.”
