Hunter Biden filed a civil lawsuit Tuesday against former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and his former attorney Bob Costello, claiming they caused “total annihilation” of his digital privacy and violated federal and state computer privacy laws through their alleged efforts to hack his devices.
The lawsuit alleges that Giuliani and Costello violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in obtaining and sharing the personal information from the laptop, and accuses Giuliani and Robert Costello of spending years “hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating, and generally obsessing over data that they were given that was taken or stolen from” his devices.
Attorneys for Hunter Biden wrote in the lawsuit: “Plaintiff has demanded Defendants Giuliani and Costello cease their unlawful activities with respect to Plaintiff’s data and return any data in their possession belonging to Plaintiff, but they have refused to do so. Defendants’ statements suggest that their unlawful hacking activities are ongoing today and that, unless stopped, will continue into the future, thereby necessitating this action.” They also allege that Giuliani has “not only admitted but bragged about downloading data from Plaintiff’s ‘laptop’ (even though he only had a hard drive) onto his own computer; about using his own computer to access, tamper with and manipulate the downloaded data; and about maintaining multiple copies of the data for his and Defendant Costello’s personal use.” The suit accuses Giuliani and Costello of breaking both federal and California state computer privacy laws and asks for a jury trial in the matter.
Ted Goodman, an adviser to Giuliani, denied allegations that the former New York mayor “manipulated” an electronic device belonging to the president’s son: “Hunter Biden has previously refused to admit ownership of the laptop. I’m not surprised he’s now falsely claiming his laptop hard drive was manipulated by Mayor Giuliani, considering the sordid material and potential evidence of crimes on that thing.”.
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