Hunter Biden sues former Trump aide over release of laptop materials online

WASHINGTON —  Hunter Biden sued a former Trump administration aide in California federal court Wednesday, alleging that he published emails, images, videos and recordings belonging to Biden online.

The 13-page suit accuses Garrett Ziegler, his company and 10 unnamed defendants of improperly “accessing, tampering with, manipulating, altering, copying and damaging computer data that they do not own” in violation of the state’s computer fraud laws.

Ziegler, a former aide to White House trade advisor Peter Navarro, has emerged in far-right media circles as one of the Biden family’s most outspoken critics. An attorney for Ziegler did not immediately answer a request for comment Wednesday.

The suit centers around a now-infamous laptop, purportedly left by Biden at a Wilmington, Del., repair shop and found by Republican operatives weeks before the 2020 election, which has become a central part of allegations of corruption involving President Biden’s son.

Ziegler has said his “nonprofit research group” Marco Polo has posted online over the last two years thousands of emails, photos, text messages and other documents purportedly from Hunter Biden’s iPhone backup and cloud storage.

The suit alleges that Ziegler and the unnamed co-defendants have ignored requests to stop releasing the information and return it to Biden, claiming that they instead “doubled down” and “vowed to continue violating the law.”

Biden is seeking a jury trial to determine damages as well as an injunction to prevent Ziegler from continuing to share the information online.

Biden’s attorneys say Ziegler “has waged a sustained, unhinged and obsessed campaign against [Hunter Biden] and the entire Biden family for more than two years.”

The filing describes how Ziegler and the 10 unnamed defendants allegedly obtained data belonging to Hunter Biden from other Trump allies in January 2021 and disseminated “tens of thousands of emails, thousands of photos, and dozens of videos and recordings” on the internet. It accuses Ziegler and the defendants of hacking an encrypted iPhone and Biden’s online cloud storage.

In March, Biden’s legal team filed a lawsuit against John Paul Mac Isaac, a computer repairman in Delaware who claimed he obtained the laptop. Biden’s lawyers also previously referred Ziegler to federal and state prosecutors for alleged criminal behavior.