Hunter Biden sues Rudy Giuliani and other allies of Donald Trump

Hunter Biden is suing Rudy Giuliani and other allies of Donald Trump, accusing them of improperly accessing and disseminating his personal data.<br><br>In a lawsuit filed in Washington on Wednesday, Biden alleges that Giuliani and Jack Maxey, another Trump ally, conspired to violate his privacy by accessing and sharing his personal laptop files.<br><br>"Despite knowing that the information on the laptop was the private property of Plaintiff HUNTER BIDEN, Defendants Giuliani and Maxey intentionally accessed the information on the laptop, and extracted thousands of files andMessagesfrom the laptop that were Plaintiff HUNTER BIDEN’s private property," the lawsuit alleges.<br><br>“Defendants Giuliani and Maxey intentionally exceeded Plaintiff HUNTER BIDEN’s authorization to access the information on the laptop, and used that information in furtherance of their own personal interests and political agendas. Plaintiff HUNTER BIDEN never authorized Defendants Giuliani and Maxey to access his private information or to use it in the manner that they did.”<br><br>The lawsuit claims that Giuliani and Maxey committed a number of federal and state crimes including violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which prohibit the unauthorized interception, disclosure, or use of stored electronic communications.<br><br>At issue is the release of the contents of Biden’s laptop in the run-up to the 2020 election, which was used by Trump and his allies to discredit him and his father, President Joe Biden.<br><br>The New York Post published a series of stories in October 2020, based on information from Giuliani and Maxey, that it said it had obtained from Biden’s laptop. The laptop was left at a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware. The Post reported that the repairman found it and contacted the FBI, but not before making a copy of the hard drive and sharing it with Giuliani. The repair shop owner was advised to delete his copy three times by a Trump campaign aide.<br><br>The authenticity of the emails and other information released from the laptop was not verified by the Post or other outlets and the Biden campaign declined to comment on their authenticity at the time. However, a year later, the Washington Post and the New York Times confirmed that thousands of emails they obtained from the laptop were authentic.<br><br>The laptop became a subject of a number of federal and congressional inquiries and it played a significant role in Trump's efforts to discredit Biden in the 2020 presidential election. <br><br>Giuliani faced a number of defamation lawsuits stemming from claims he made about the election and Biden. He was also temporarily suspended from practicing law in the state of New York after a court found that he made "demonstrably false and misleading statements" about the 2020 election in legal filings and in public statements.<br><br>The lawsuit names nine Trump allies including Giuliani as defendants, alleging that they violated Biden's privacy and committed a number of other federal and state crimes. It seeks financial damages and asks the court to return the laptop and its contents to Biden.