Hunter Biden, son of the President, filed suit Tuesday against former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani for “hacking” Biden’s laptop and disseminating information.
“Defendants are among those who have been primarily responsible for what has been described as the ‘total annihilation’ of Plaintiff’s digital privacy,” Hunter Biden’s attorneys wrote in the lawsuit, which was filed on California.
Biden’s attorney’s allege that Giuliani, his businesses, and former Giuliani attorney Robert Costello—who’s currently suing Giuliani over unpaid legal bills—violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as a California law dealing with data access and fraud. The lawsuit requests leaving it up to a jury to determine any potential damages, or whether to seize any profits made from disseminating the data.
The suit alleges that Giuliani and the other defendants “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 from Plaintiff’s devices or storage platforms, including what Defendants claim to have obtained from Plaintiff’s alleged ‘laptop’ computer.’”
Biden’s attorneys are demanding that Giuliani and Costello “cease their unlawful activities with respect to Plaintiff’s data and return any data in their possession belonging to Plaintiff,” but the pair have “refused to do so.”
Hunter Biden earlier this year sued computer repairman John Paul Mac Isaac in Delaware, alleging that Isaac conspired to invade his privacy and that he was defamed.
Mac Isaac has said that Biden dropped off his laptop at his shop for repairs on April 12, 2019, and an external hard drive the next day, but never returned to pay the $85 fee or pick up the equipment.
Giuliani spokesperson Ted Goodman responded to the lawsuit, saying, “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.”
The lawsuit against Giulani comes as the President’s son faces arraignment this coming Tuesday after being arraigned on gun possession charges amid a five-year-long investigation by now-Special Counsel David Weiss.
Giuliani, meanwhile, is facing his own mounting legal troubles, including that he is among 19 co-defendants, along with former President Trump, indicted on racketeering and other charges related to the attempt to overturn the 2020 Presidential election in Georgia.
He’s also facing a December 11 trial date in U.S. District Court in DC to determine the amount of damages he owes after he was successfully sued by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss for defamation.
And in July, DC Board of Professional Responsibility, a disciplinary committee, recommended that Giuliani be disbarred for his efforts nationwide to overturn President Biden’s 2020 election victory. The former mayor of New York City, Giuliani has already had his New York law license suspended over “demonstrably false and misleading” claims he’s made about voter fraud.
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