Left: Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, boards Air Force One with the president, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023, at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, N.Y. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky); Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas speaks at the Heritage Foundation on Oct. 21, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images). Right: Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani leaves the federal courthouse in Washington, Monday, Dec. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Lawyers for businesses owned by Rudy Giuliani named in a Hunter Biden lawsuit over an allegedly hacked laptop want the case to be dropped, accusing the president’s son of basing his lawsuit on a “truly bizarre theory.”
As Law&Crime previously reported, President Joe Biden’s son sued Giuliani, three of the former New York City mayor’s businesses, and attorney Robert Costello — who is also suing the former New York mayor for unpaid legal fees — in September for allegedly “hacking into” and “generally obsessing” over Hunter Biden’s “alleged ‘laptop’ computer” in recent years. In a motion to dismiss filed Wednesday, attorney Alan Gordee, who represents Costello and the Giuliani businesses, says Hunter Biden’s complaint doesn’t provide enough evidence to support the allegations.
In his complaint, Biden claimed that Giuliani and Costello “themselves admit that their purported possession of a ‘laptop’ is in fact not a ‘laptop’ at all,” asserting that there’s no telling how much his personal data has been tampered with or manipulated.
That ambiguity, Gordee argues, is a basis for the claim to be dismissed.
“Over two years after the broad dissemination of the Biden Laptop files, Plaintiff filed this lawsuit against Defendants based on a truly bizarre theory — that the ‘Biden Laptop’ is not really Plaintiff’s laptop, but rather a laptop masquerading as Biden’s laptop containing salacious files that were falsely attributed to him intermixed with files supposedly stolen or hacked from him,” the motion says. “In this way, Biden carefully toes the line between disclaiming responsibility for the worst of the Biden Laptop, while manufacturing standing to sue Defendants by taking ownership of ‘some’ data that Defendants allegedly ‘hacked’.”
The fact that Hunter Biden can’t retrace the defendants’ steps means that the lawsuit cannot proceed, the motion says.
“According to Biden, he is oblivious to what information Defendants have of his or how exactly they got it,” Gordee argues (citations omitted). “Such a pleading, on its face, cannot possibly satisfy” the legal requirements to support a claim.
In a series of questions, Gordee lists what he describes as “multiple glaring omissions that are essential” to Hunter Biden’s allegations:
- Biden fails to plead which hard drive, laptop, or other electronic device or storage mechanism that belonged to him was supposedly hacked. Was there ever a laptop containing the information he now complains over? A desktop? A phone? A tablet? External hard drive? Cloud storage? How can Biden know anything was hacked if he doesn’t know what device on which he stored the data that Defendants now allegedly wrongfully possess.
- Biden fails to plead when the alleged hacking occurred. What year was it? Did he ever provide a laptop to a repair shop in Delaware? Was there ever any event where he realized his electronic data was compromised? What measures were in place to protect the data on whatever device(s) supposedly were hacked?
- Biden fails to plead what of that data that is circulating in the public domain is his data and what information is not his data. Biden claims that some, but not all of the data Defendants allegedly possess is his. What data is it? Surely, he must know if he brought this lawsuit. But there is not a single piece of data that Biden identifies in the Complaint as: (1) belonging to him; (2) in the possession of the Defendants; that was (3) hacked/stolen/wrongfully taken from a computer owned by Biden.
Gordee also argues that the complaint is barred by the statute of limitations because Hunter Biden “was well aware of his ‘damages’ well over two years” before filing the lawsuit.
“There is no question that, well before two years — and likely much longer — that Biden knew of the ‘damages’ of supposed compromising and dissemination of his data was taking place,” the motion says. “Biden would have been ‘within his rights’ to sue in April 2021, but instead he feigned ignorance, and it was not until the Laptop data was authenticated as his that his ignorance evolved into retaliatory litigation. This claim is time barred.”
According to Gordee, the case doesn’t even belong in California, where Hunter Biden filed. Gordee argued that the defendants do not have contacts with the Golden State relating to the allegations, and notes that “Biden’s own pleadings refer to Defendant’s activities as ‘The Manhattan Project’ because the conduct complained of has occurred almost exclusively in New York.”
The motion also argued that the case should be dropped under California’s Anti-SLAPP statute, which is aimed at limiting “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” because statements made about Hunter Biden’s computer are constitutionally protected.
The statute, Gordee argues, “requires Biden to adduce prima facie evidence of his claims and overcome Defendants’ substantive defenses — a task far too tall for him to accomplish given that he admits he is ‘unaware’ of how this fantastical chain of events could have happened.”
According to the motion, any statements made by the defendants are protected under the Constitution.
“Here, there is no question — by Biden’s own admissions in his Complaint — that this entire lawsuit arises from, is based on, and in response to Defendants public statements regarding Biden and the Biden Laptop,” the complaint says, later adding: “At minimum, Defendants statements referenced in the Complaint are on a matter of public concern — whether a sitting president’s son (a public figure) was involved in illicit activities evidenced by his abandoned hard drive. Finally, the allegations that Defendants invited others to allegedly examine Biden’s data (the ‘Manhattan Project’ hacking gatherings) and disseminating the data to news outlets and other third parties is clearly conduct in furtherance of their protected rights of free speech and association.”
The lawsuit notes that the lawsuit is stayed to Giuliani himself, as he has filed for bankruptcy in New York.
Hunter Biden sued under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) two weeks after filing a similar suit against Garrett Ziegler, a former policy analyst for Donald Trump’s administration who allegedly pursued a yearslong “unhinged and obsessed campaign” against the Biden family in connection with the “Biden laptop.”
Read the motion to dismiss here.
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