Lawyers for Hunter Biden sent letters Wednesday requesting investigations into allies of former President Donald Trump who they say is trading in information stolen from his laptop — a dramatic change in strategy for the president’s son after years of GOP attacks .
Among the letters, obtained by NBC News, was sent Wednesday to the Justice Department’s National Security Division requesting an investigation into “individuals for whom there is substantial reason to believe that certain federal laws have been violated in accessing, copying , manipulating and/or disseminating Mr. Biden’s personal computer data,” including Rudy Giuliani, who was Trump’s attorney at the time.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers wrote a similar letter to the Delaware Attorney General’s office, asking for an investigation into the same people for allegedly violating “various Delaware laws” in accessing Biden’s information from what Trump called “the laptop from hell.” has
The Department of Justice declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Delaware attorney general did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Information from the laptop raised questions about Biden’s finances, which have been under investigation by federal prosecutors in Delaware since 2018. They were also the source of several salacious stories from conservative media, many focused on his drug use.
Biden has largely kept a low profile during the years of stories — Trump would ask the question “Where’s Hunter?” during campaign rallies in the 2020 election — but a person familiar with the first son’s strategy told NBC News that he had had enough.
“This marks a new approach by Hunter Biden and his team. He will not sit quietly as dubious characters continue to violate his rights and media organizations that sell in lies try to defame him,” said the person.
Giuliani acknowledged that he passed on a copy of the computer’s hard drive to the New York Post shortly before the 2020 presidential election. The letters to investigators also recommended an investigation of John Paul Mac Isaac, who said Biden left the water-damaged laptop at his Wilmington, Delaware, computer repair shop.
“Mr. Mac Isaac chose to work with President Donald Trump’s personal attorney to weaponize Mr. Biden’s personal computer data against his father, Joseph R. Biden, by illegally providing Mr. Biden’s personal data to the New York Post caused,” the letter says.
It accuses Mac Isaac and others of “theft of computer services” and Giuliani and others of “possession of stolen property.”
While Biden previously declined comment on whether the various emails and images were legitimate, the letters appear to acknowledge that at least some are — but said Biden isn’t sure how many.
The letters say that evaluating the data was “extremely difficult because for months neither the New York Post” nor its source for the material, President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, was willing to share the data with the public. share. , downstream recipients of what was claimed to be Mr. Biden’s hard drive reported anomalies in the data, suggesting manipulation of it.”
In another letter sent Wednesday, Biden attorney Abbe Lowell asked the Internal Revenue Service to review the tax-exempt status of a charitable organization run by Garrett Ziegler, who Biden said uploaded the data, which he received from Giuliani on the charity’s website.
The letter said the organization “operated as little more than a thinly veiled political operation to attack the Biden administration and the Biden family,” contrary to regulations that state such groups “may not engage in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.”
The IRS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Biden’s lawyers also sent a letter to Fox News and host Tucker Carlson, demanding a retraction of “false and defamatory statements made by Mr. Carlson on his show” about Hunter Biden.
The story falsely implied that Hunter Biden was involved in a “money laundering scheme to fund President Biden’s lifestyle” by paying him $50,000 a month in rent. The story was quickly debunked, but Carlson never retracted it, the letter says.
The letter also puts Carlson and the network “on notice of potential lawsuits” and demands they retain all documents related to the story.
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
