Abbe Lowell, a recently hired attorney hired by Biden about a month ago, sent lengthy letters to the Department of Justice and Delaware’s attorney general demanding an investigation into several key players involved in the release of the laptop data that Biden allegedly dropped it off at a repair shop in Wilmington, Del.
Bryan M. Sullivan, another attorney now representing Biden, sent a separate message to Carlson and Fox News demanding they correct falsehoods from his recent broadcast or risk a possible defamation lawsuit.
And in another letter, Lowell wrote to the IRS challenging the nonprofit status of the Marco Polo Group, led by conservative activist Garrett M. Ziegler. Lowell submitted 36 pages of evidence that the group engages in political activity that violates its nonprofit status.
Together, the moves represent the boldest and most aggressive moves yet by Biden, who has often heeded the advice of those who urged him not to go public. Those close to President Biden and the White House prefer a more conservative approach, but some individuals around Hunter Biden wanted to tell their side of the story more forcefully and go after his opponents more directly.
“This marks a new approach by Hunter Biden and his team,” said a person familiar with his strategy, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private plans. “He will not sit idly by while questionable individuals continue to violate his rights and media organizations that peddle lies try to smear him.”
The new strategy marks a calculated risk that it’s better to take a bellicose route and confront Biden’s longtime critics, even if it means inviting more news about a dark chapter in his life and drawing additional attention to a trove of personal and uncomfortable material. included in the laptop expanded by his opponents.
In letters related to his personal information, Biden’s lawyers are asking state and federal law enforcement agencies to investigate individuals who came into possession of the data, some of which may have come from a laptop he allegedly dumped in Delaware in April 2019. allege that about half a dozen people violated various laws, including the release of restricted private information; access to and dissemination of stolen property; and making false statements to Congress.
“The actions described above more than merit a full investigation and, depending on the facts established, may merit prosecution under various laws,” the letters state. “It is not common for a private individual and his defense attorney to seek out someone else to investigate, but the actions and motives here warrant it.”
The letters specifically focus on John Paul Mac Isaac, a computer repair shop owner who claimed he first received the material from Biden in April 2019. Mac Isaac has written a book and spoken at political events, and Biden’s lawyers point to inconsistencies in his account.
The letters also demand investigations into former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was given the material by Mac Isaac and later distributed it; Robert Costello, who is Giuliani’s lawyer and also received the material; and Stephen K. Bannon, who also had the material and helped make the initial news about it possible.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers also mention the names of Jack Maxey, who provided the material to several news outlets, including The Washington Post, as well as Ziegler, who uploaded the information to his website, and Yaacov Apelbaum, a former aide to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis. ), which Mac Isaac said helped create a “forensic image” of the hard drive.
A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment. A message left with the Delaware attorney general’s office — the office Hunter’s brother Beau used to hold — was not immediately returned.
Mac Isaac’s attorney, Brian Della Rocca, said Wednesday night that he had just received a copy of the material.
“After skimming through the letters, all I can see is a privileged person hiring yet another expensive lawyer to divert attention away from their own illegal actions,” he said. “There are no other comments at this time.”
Several others named in letters sent by Biden’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
As material allegedly from Biden’s laptop circulated among conservative activists and media organizations, it fueled debate over its authenticity. By filing the complaint, however, Biden’s lawyers appear to acknowledge that some of the information that has been released is his private information, although they say other material could be redacted later. They don’t say if he actually dropped off the laptop for repair.
“These illegal actions resulted in the widespread publication, manipulation and exploitation of Mr. Biden’s most personal information,” Lowell writes in some of the letters.
Citing Mac Isaac’s admission that he reviewed some of Hunter Biden’s financial information on a laptop, the lawyers say he did not have the authority or permission to do so.
“Backing up Mr. Biden’s files for any repair did not require Mr. Mac Isaac to review the contents of such files,” Lowell writes. “Mr. Biden did not consent to Mr. Mac Isaac being given access to the contents of these files in April 2019 or at any other time.”
The letters also reveal that in December, another of Hunter Biden’s lawyers — Chris Clark, a former federal prosecutor and New York partner at Latham & Watkins — sent a similar criminal referral focused only on Mac Isaac to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
The laptop has been the subject of intense scrutiny since the New York Post published stories just before the 2020 election. At the time, The Washington Post repeatedly asked Giuliani and Bannon for a copy of the data to review, but the requests were denied or ignored.
In June 2021, Maxey, who previously worked as a researcher for Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, delivered to The Washington Post a portable hard drive he said contained data. He said he got it from Giuliani.
The Post asked two security experts to examine the 217 gigabytes of data on the drive, and they found nearly 22,000 emails with cryptographic signatures that could be verified using technology that would be difficult for even the most sophisticated hackers to forge. The vast majority of the data — and most of the nearly 129,000 emails it contained — could not be verified, security experts said.
Biden said he wasn’t sure if the laptop was his and didn’t remember leaving it, but admitted his memory was unreliable at the height of his drug addiction. His allies also speculate that the materials that were later released may be a hodgepodge of materials obtained through different means.
During the same period, Biden also left a laptop with Keith Ablow, a Massachusetts psychiatrist who was close to Republican activist Roger Stone. That laptop was seized by agents who raided Ablow’s office in February 2020 and eventually returned to Biden.
Kevin Morris, one of Biden’s friends and associates, oversaw a forensic analysis of that laptop to determine whether it was the basis of the hard drives later distributed by Trump allies.
Biden’s lawyers also claim Fox News defamed him in a story Carlson aired in which it falsely said Biden paid $50,000 in “rent” to his father, a scheme it alleged was used to draining money from father to son.
But the reality, as deconstructed by The Washington Post Fact Checker, revealed that Hunter Biden was actually paying $49,910 every three months for office space in Washington.
Some other outlets, including the Daily Caller, later updated and retracted their stories.
“We demand that you immediately rescind these statements and spend considerable time in such retraction,” Sullivan wrote in a letter to Carlson and a Fox News attorney.
He demanded an apology from Carlson and other commentators — including Fox’s Sean Hannity — who made similar claims, and demanded that Fox News respond in writing by Thursday.
“If we do not receive this written confirmation, we will assume that you are not interested in acting responsibly and professionally and are not prepared to reverse her actual reporting of malice,” Sullivan wrote.
Citing the possibility of litigation, Sullivan also demanded that Fox News retain all communications and documents related to the story.
