Hunter Biden has begun an aggressive counterattack against his accusers by asking the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into Trump allies who he claims illegally accessed the computer he abandoned and left at a Delaware repair shop.
Biden’s lawyers are also suing Fox News host Tucker Carlson for making “false and defamatory claims” that Biden’s son had access to classified documents stored at his father’s home.
This salvo from Hunter Biden represents a new White House strategy that will play out during all the investigations into the president, his son, and Democrats as Republicans ramp up a long list of investigations now that they have control of the House.
The request for a criminal inquiry, which comes as Hunter Biden faces his own tax evasion investigation by the Justice Department, does not mean federal prosecutors will open a probe or take any other action. But it nonetheless represents a concerted shift in strategy and a rare public response by the younger Biden and his legal team to years of attacks by Republican officials and conservative media, scrutiny expected to continue now that the GOP has taken over the House.
It also represents the latest salvo in the long-running laptop saga, which began with a New York Post story in October 2020 that detailed some of the emails it says were found on the device related to Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. It was swiftly seized on by Trump as a campaign issue during the presidential election that year.
The suit claiming Trump allies accessed his personal information illegally on the abandoned laptop is ludicrous. Biden dropped off three laptops in April 2019 at John Paul Mac Isaac’s computer repair shop. A full year and a half later — after several unsuccessful attempts by Mac Isaac to contact Hunter Biden — the hard drive of the computer ended up with Rudy Giuliani’s attorney Brian Costello.
Hunter Biden had forfeited any right to privacy with regard to the laptop by that time. This is a political suit aiming to misdirect attention from what was in the laptop that Hunter Biden doesn’t want anyone to see.
The letter to the Justice Department was addressed to its top national security official, Matthew Olsen. It cites possible violations of statutes prohibiting the unauthorized access of a computer or stored electronic communication, as well as the transport of stolen data across state lines and the publication of restricted personal data with the intent to intimidate or threaten.
As for the suit against Tucker Carlson, that too is giggle-worthy. Carlson’s speech is protected by the First Amendment, and Carlson hasn’t definitively said that the younger Biden accessed the classified information. He only pointed out that Hunter Biden was in the same home where the classified documents were stored.
Both the letter to DOJ requesting a criminal investigation and the suit against Carlson are not going to last long. The Justice Department shouldn’t dignify the political ploy with a response, and it’s likely a judge is going to toss the suit against Tucker Carlson.
Meanwhile, Biden’s lawyers are looking ahead to a trial, and it never hurts to get your side of the story out into the public — even though it’s absurd — to citizens who may sit on a Hunter Biden jury.
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