Hunter Biden has sued Rudy Giuliani over his infamous laptop scandal, claiming the former New York City Mayor hacked into the external hard drive and manipulated data.
The suit filed in the US District Court of Central California accuses Giuliani and former federal prosecutor Robert Costello of violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act when they accessed the hard drive, the New York Post reports.
“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 from Plaintiff’s devices or storage platforms, including what Defendants claim to have obtained from Plaintiff’s alleged ‘laptop’ computer,” the filing read.
The suit alleges Giuliani and Costello contributed to the “total annihilation” of Biden’s “digital privacy” when they accessed the hard drive on the laptop.
Giuliani said he was given the Hunter Biden laptop by repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac in 2020.
The suit cited an interview from September 12, 2022, in which Costello showed a reporter how they gained entry to the hard drive.
The filing also alleged that the two “tampered with, [and] manipulated the data, before making copies to share with Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
The suit also acknowledged that Giuliani and Costello accessed Biden’s “personal photos,” which included the infamous shots of the first son allegedly doing drugs with prostitutes.
The New York Post reports:
In addition to “thousands of emails, bank statements, and other financial documents,” the suit acknowledged that Giuliani and Costello accessed Biden’s “personal photos,” which included a number of now-infamous shots of the first son allegedly doing drugs and cavorting with scantily clad sex workers.
The contents of the laptop have since generated thousands of headlines, mostly from conservative media outlets intent on unmasking the Biden family’s private activities.
The new lawsuit also cited a comment Giuliani made on his podcast earlier this year.
“This belongs to Hunter Biden,” the former New York City mayor said while holding up a laptop during a February 2 installment of “America’s Mayor Live.”
“[Giuliani] proceeded to brag about having copied [Hunter Biden’s] data onto his own computer and about having accessed, analyzed and manipulated the transferred data,” the suit claimed.
Giuliani and Costello’s actions, Biden’s attorneys wrote, constitute a violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as the California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act.
“Although Defendants and their allies are entitled to their baseless opinions about Plaintiff and the Biden family — and they are also free to share those opinions on their podcasts and with whomever else cares about what they have to say — they are not entitled to violate federal and state anti-computer hacking laws to advance their personal and political agendas,” the scathing filing stated.
The lawsuit against Giuliani and Costello is the latest strike in Hunter Biden’s months-long effort to push back against the tidal wave of reaction to the laptop’s content.
In February, Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell — who was tapped this week to represent indicted Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) — served 14 Republican media figures and one-time officials with letters that warned of future litigation over their accusations against the troubled first son, CBS noted.
A few months later, Biden’s legal team sued Mac Isaac, the IRS, and a former Trump White House crony, the outlet explained.
At the same time, Biden grappled with his own mounting legal woes, as he watched his plea deal over tax and firearm violations collapse in court in July and was hit with a subsequent indictment earlier this month.
For his part, Giuliani was among those indicted alongside Trump in August in Fulton County, Georgia, on charges related to alleged attempts to tamper with the 2020 election.
Last week, the former New York City mayor was also hit with a lawsuit filed by Costello — his friend of nearly 50 years — who claimed that Giuliani owed his firm nearly $1.4 million in unpaid legal fees, CBS reported.
Giuliani told the outlet he was “personally hurt” by Costello’s filing, while the latter scoffed that his former ally had taken “the low road.”
Attorneys for Hunter Biden did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment on the latest lawsuit.
READ: James Clapper: I Haven’t “Seen Proof” Russians Didn’t Mess with Hunter Biden’s Laptop
