West News Wire: Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, has filed a lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani and another lawyer, alleging that the two improperly gained access to and exchanged his personal information after buying it from the proprietor of a computer repair business in the US state of Delaware.
The complaint, which was filed on Tuesday, is the most recent move in Hunter’s new strategy to fight back against Republican associates of former President Donald Trump who have shared and traded his personal information, including fictitious emails and unflattering pictures, in an effort to undermine his father.
Giuliani and lawyer Robert Costello are charged with spending years “hacking into, tampering with, altering, copying, spreading, and generally obsessing over” the material that was “taken or stolen” from Hunter’s devices or storage,” according to the lawsuit.
The campaign has led to the “total annihilation” of his digital privacy, the claim alleges.
The lawsuit also claims the younger Biden’s data was “manipulated, altered and damaged” before it was sent to Giuliani and Costello, and has been further altered since then.
They broke laws against computer hacking when they did, according to the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages and a court order to return the data and make no more copies.
Costello used to represent Giuliani, but recently filed a lawsuit against the former New York City mayor saying he did not pay more than $1.3m in legal bills.
The Associated Press (AP) sent a message to Giuliani’s representative on Tuesday morning seeking comment, but they did not respond right away. To the news organisation, Costello declined to comment.
He said in February that a letter from Hunter’s attorneys asking the Justice Department to look into him and others in connection with the laptop was “frivolous legal documentation” that “reeks of desperation because they know judgement day is coming for the Bidens.”
The lawsuit filed on Tuesday is the most recent development in the laptop controversy, which was kicked off by a New York Post article published in October 2020 that described some of the emails it claims to have discovered on the device relating to Hunter’s international business transactions.
It was swiftly seized on by Trump as a campaign issue during the US presidential election that year.
Hunter does not explicitly acknowledge that the laptop left at the computer shop was his, but says “at least some” of the data was on his iPhone or backed up to iCloud.
A Justice Department special counsel is also separately pursuing an investigation into Hunter’s taxes, and has filed firearm possession charges against him, and he plans to plead not guilty. He has also been charged with tax crimes.
In the meantime, House Republicans have persisted in looking into every facet of Hunter’s business operations and have attempted to connect them to his father as part of an impeachment investigation into Vice President Biden. Some of their claims are anticipated to be further explained at a hearing on Thursday.
Hunter has switched his strategy, and his friends have hinted that there may be more after he remained mute while the photographs spread across the nation.
The younger Biden has been suing a former Trump assistant for exposing emails and unflattering photos over the previous few months.
Hunter also filed a lawsuit earlier this month against the US tax agency, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), saying his personal data was wrongly shared by two agents who testified as whistleblowers as part of a probe by House Republicans into his business dealings.
The president’s son has also pushed for an investigation into Giuliani and Costello, along with the Wilmington computer repair shop owner who has said Hunter dropped a laptop off at his store in April 2019 and never returned to pick it up.
