Hunter Biden demands investigations and retractions, opening new front against GOP foes - CBS News

Hunter Biden's ineligible squad went connected the violative Wednesday, demanding authorities and national investigations into the dissemination of his idiosyncratic worldly — purported to beryllium from his laptop — and threatening a defamation suit against Fox News' Tucker Carlson for allegedly failing to close mendacious statements.  

The flurry of letters to the Delaware lawyer general, the Department of Justice, the I.R.S. and attorneys for Fox News and Carlson correspond an assertive caller strategy for the president's son, who is facing long-running federal transgression investigations, arsenic good arsenic caller probes promised by congressional Republicans, according to a root acquainted with Biden's approach.

"This marks a caller attack by Hunter Biden and his team," the root told CBS News. "He is not going to beryllium softly by arsenic questionable characters proceed to interruption his rights and media organizations peddling successful lies effort to defame him." 

Attorneys for Hunter Biden called for Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings and U.S. Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew G. Olsen to motorboat investigations into the actions of erstwhile machine repair store proprietor John Paul Mac Isaac, erstwhile Trump advisers Rudy Giuliani and Stephen Bannon, their lawyer Robert Costello and others "for whom determination is sizeable crushed to judge violated assorted Delaware laws successful accessing, copying, manipulating, and/or disseminating Mr. Biden's idiosyncratic machine data."

Brian Della Rocca, lawyer for John Paul Mac Isaac told CBS News, "Having not seen the letters until now, I haven't had overmuch of an accidental to reappraisal them. After skimming the letters, the lone happening I spot is simply a privileged idiosyncratic hiring yet different high-priced lawyer to redirect attraction distant from his ain unlawful actions." Della Rocca said helium had nary different comments astatine this time.  

The Delaware Attorney General did not reply to a petition for comment. The Justice Department declined to comment. CBS News has besides reached retired for remark to representatives for Giuliani and Bannon, arsenic good arsenic Fox News.

According to Mac Isaac, Hunter Biden dropped disconnected the machine astatine a store successful Delaware for repairs successful April 2019 and ne'er returned to prime it up. He has said helium waited the 90 days required by his store's lawsuit work argumentation earlier considering the laptop abandoned. In tribunal filings, Mac Isaac stated that helium turned implicit the machine to the FBI but besides provided a transcript of its contents to Costello.

Purported copies of the laptop were wide circulated by Republican operatives to onslaught then-candidate Joe Biden earlier the 2020 statesmanlike election, and the New York Post published a bid of stories from the machine data.

"This failed soiled governmental instrumentality straight resulted successful the exposure, exploitation, and manipulation of Mr. Biden's backstage and idiosyncratic information," Abbe Lowell, an lawyer for Hunter Biden, wrote successful his letters to Jennings and Olsen.

Costello, an lawyer for Giuliani and Bannon, has antecedently defended their efforts to publicize the laptop, and said Giuliani offered to supply its hard thrust to FBI agents "on respective occasions,  but the agents steadfastly declined." In October 2020, Giuliani turned the thrust implicit to Delaware authorities, who successful crook handed it implicit to the FBI.

The machine information that was turned implicit to the FBI showed nary grounds of tampering oregon fabrication, according to an independent reappraisal commissioned by CBS News.

But Lowell cited media reports indicating "[m]ore recently, downstream recipients of what has been purported to beryllium Mr. Biden's hard thrust person reported anomalies successful the data, suggesting manipulation of it."

Among those Hunter Biden wants investigated are Garrett Ziegler, a erstwhile Trump medication aide, who was besides the taxable of a missive sent by Lowell to Robert Malone, the I.R.S's manager of taxation exempt organizations. A constricted liability corp associated with Ziegler operates Marco Polo, a self-described nonprofit devoted to "exposing corruption" that has zeroed successful connected Biden's laptop.

Lowell wrote that Marco Polo is "little much than a thinly disguised governmental cognition to onslaught the Biden medication and the Biden family."

Ziegler told CBS News successful a connection that the "letter to the IRS astir Marco Polo is afloat of speculations and basal misunderstandings astir the lawsuit instrumentality surrounding 501(c)(3) organizations." He called it a "desperate effort by "Hunter and his household to get the attraction disconnected of their crimes."

The IRS did not reply to a petition for comment. 

In another missive sent Wednesday, Biden lawyer Bryan Sullivan demanded that Fox News and Tucker Carlson give airtime to retracting statements made astir Biden paying "rent" to his father, "in what Mr. Carlson implied was fundamentally a wealth laundering strategy to concern President Biden's manner anterior to his predetermination … and alluding to Mr. Biden having unauthorized entree to classified documents due to the fact that of his beingness astatine President Biden's house." Sullivan writes that the claims were false, and adjacent aft others acknowledged arsenic much, Carlson continued to marque them.

The letter, which cites California's defamation statute, notes that the Daily Caller website retracted an nonfiction that made akin claims.

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