WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� sued Rudy Giuliani and another attorney Tuesday, saying the two wrongly accessed and shared his personal data after obtaining it from the owner of a Delaware computer repair shop.
in a new strategy by Hunter Biden to strike back against Republican allies of Donald Trump, who have traded and passed around his private data including purported emails and embarrassing images in their effort to discredit his father, President .
The suit accuses Giuliani and attorney Robert Costello of spending years 鈥渉acking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating, and generally obsessing over鈥� the data that was 鈥渢aken or stolen鈥� from Biden鈥檚 devices or storage, leading to the 鈥渢otal annihilation鈥� of Biden鈥檚 digital privacy.
The suit filed in California also claims Biden鈥檚 data was 鈥渕anipulated, altered and damaged鈥� before it was sent to Giuliani and Costello, and has been further altered since then. Accessing, opening and sharing it broke laws against computer hacking, the suit argues. It seeks unspecified damages and a court order to return the data and make no more copies.
Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Giuliani, said it was false to claim Giuliani manipulated the laptop hard drive, but he was "not surprised ... considering the sordid material and potential evidence of crimes on that thing.鈥�
Costello used to represent Giuliani, but recently filed a lawsuit against the former New York City mayor saying he did not pay more than $1.3 million in legal bills.
Costello declined to comment. In February, he told The Associated Press that a letter from Hunter Biden's lawyers that requested a Justice Department investigation of him and others related to the laptop was a 鈥渇rivolous legal document鈥� that 鈥渞eeks of desperation because they know judgment day is coming for the Bidens.鈥�
Tuesday鈥檚 lawsuit marks the latest turn in the long-running , 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鈥檚 foreign business dealings. It was swiftly seized on by Trump as a campaign issue during the presidential election that year.
Biden doesn鈥檛 explicitly acknowledge that the laptop left at the computer shop was his, but says 鈥渁t least some鈥� of the data was on his iPhone or backed up to iCloud.
A Justice Department special counsel is separately pursuing an investigation into Hunter Biden's taxes, and after a previous plea deal on tax and gun charges imploded. He plans to plead not guilty to the gun counts, according to court records.
House Republicans, meanwhile, have continued to investigate every aspect of Hunter Biden's business dealings and sought to tie them to his father, the president, as part of an impeachment inquiry. A hearing on Thursday is expected to detail some of their claims anew.
Hunter Biden, meanwhile, after remaining silent as the images are splayed across the country, has changed his tactic, and his allies have signaled there's more to come. Over the past few months, he's also sued a former aide to Trump over his alleged role in publishing emails and embarrassing images, and filed a lawsuit against saying his personal data was wrongly shared by two agents who testified as whistleblowers as part of a probe by House Republicans into his business dealings.
Biden has also pushed for an investigation into Giuliani and Costello, along with the Wilmington computer repair shop owner who has said Hunter Biden dropped a laptop off at his store in April 2019 and never returned to pick it up.
Giuliani provided the information to a reporter at the New York Post, which first wrote about the laptop, Biden's attorney said in a letter pushing for a federal investigation.
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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
Lindsay Whitehurst, The Associated Press
