‘Russian Disinfo,’ Huh? Computer Store Owner Sues Hunter, Biden Campaign For Defamation Over Laptop

The owner of the Delaware computer repair store where Hunter Biden abandoned his MacBook filed suit against Hunter Biden, the Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign, Rep. Adam Schiff, CNN, and Politico in Delaware state court on Monday. The eight-count complaint alleged claims of defamation, civil conspiracy, and civil aiding and abetting against the defendants based on statements they made after the New York Post published the scandalous materials recovered from Hunter’s laptop.

John Paul Mac Isaac found himself thrust into the public eye after the New York Post on Oct. 14, 2020, published an exposé about the contents of the laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned at Isaac’s Delaware computer repair store. No sooner had the news broken than Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and backers of the Democrat candidate called the story Russian disinformation.

While Hunter Biden refused to comment on the story before the November 2020 election, after President Biden found himself safely in the White House, Hunter sat down with CBS News and when asked, “Was that your laptop?” the president’s son replied: “I really don’t know what the answer is. I have no idea.” But when pushed on whether the laptop could be his, Hunter responded: “There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me.” “It could be that I was hacked. It could be that it was the — that it was Russian intelligence. It could be that it was stolen from me.”

Isaac’s lawsuit against Hunter alleges that, contrary to Hunter’s claims, he knew the laptop was his, as Hunter knowingly left the laptop with Isaac on April 12, 2019, and then a short time later returned to the store with an external hard drive for Isaac to transfer the data recovered from the laptop hard drive. Yet Hunter “knowingly broadcast the false and defamatory information about his laptop to third parties — viewers of the interview” that imputed that Isaac was “involved in one or more crimes including, theft of his laptop, hacking of his laptop, or being part of a plot by Russian intelligence.”

The Delaware store owner also sued the “Biden for President Campaign Committee,” or “BFPCC,” which served as Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. According to his complaint, the members of the BFPCC claimed the New York Post exposé was “a Russian disinformation operation.” A senior Biden campaign adviser would repeat that theme in an interview on MSNBC, saying that if then-President Trump “decides to amplify these latest smears against the vice president and his only living son, that is Russian disinformation.”

Biden Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield, on behalf of BFPCC, likewise said of the information from the laptop “that what [Trump is] doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation.” And the candidate himself, Joseph R. Biden Jr., the complaint stressed, “representing the views of BFPCC,” said, “[t]here are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. Five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a