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Washington: Hunter Biden has filed a lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani and Giuliani’s former lawyer, Bob Costello, charging that the two men misused his personal computer data – the latest counter-attack by the president’s son against his GOP critics.
“For the past many months and even years, Defendants have dedicated an extraordinary amount of time and energy toward looking for, hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating, and generally obsessing over data that they were given that was taken or stolen,” the lawsuit charges. It alleges that the duo’s actions violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Information found on Hunter Biden’s laptop computer has sparked a new round of controversy.Credit: Nathan Perri
In 2020, Giuliani and other advocates of Donald Trump’s reelection bid touted data they had received from a laptop that Biden apparently left at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware.
As Giuliani’s lawyer, Costello received a copy of the data, which Giuliani then publicised, according to published accounts.
In the lawsuit, Biden does not concede that the laptop was his, but he does acknowledge that at least “some of the data that Defendants obtained, copied, and proceeded to hack into and tamper with belongs” to him.
Rudy Giuliani speaks outside the Fulton County jail in Atlanta before being charged in relation to Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.Credit: AP
The lawsuit alleges that Biden’s data was “manipulated, altered and damaged before it was copied and sent” to Giuliani and Costello.
The lawsuit notes that Giuliani regularly talked about the data in public appearances, including a podcast episode in late 2022 in which Giuliani held up a laptop computer and announced, “This is the hard drive they’re on”.
Ted Goodman, a spokesman for Giuliani, said that Biden “previously refused to admit ownership of the laptop. I’m not surprised he’s now falsely claiming his laptop hard drive was manipulated by Mayor Giuliani, considering the sordid material and potential evidence of crimes on that thing”.
Last week, Hunter Biden filed a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, accusing the agency of violating his rights and privacy as a taxpayer when two agents investigating him told Congress and news reporters about their concerns the case was not being prosecuted properly.
The new burst of legal action comes after a federal indictment of Biden earlier this month on gun charges, after a planned plea deal for gun and tax charges fell apart this summer.
That deal was negotiated with David Weiss, the US attorney in Delaware.
After the plea negotiations collapsed, Weiss was appointed special counsel by Attorney-General Merrick Garland. Weiss is now weighing whether to file additional charges against Biden in California over alleged tax crimes that the agents say they found in reviewing his finances from 2014 to 2019.
The Washington Post
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