Dueling legal claims by Hunter Biden, laptop repairman and CNN made in Delaware courtroom

A judge in Sussex County on Thursday heard arguments in dueling legal claims filed by Hunter Biden and the former computer repairman that distributed a trove of Biden's personal emails, photographs and other data to surrogates of former President Donald Trump ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Biden, son of President Joe Biden, claims that John Paul Mac Isaac invaded his privacy by combing through and distributing his private data, including embarrassing images of drug use and sex acts, that Mac Isaac said was derived from a laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at his shop.

Mac Isaac, who formerly operated a computer repair business in Wilmington's Trolley Square, claims that Hunter Biden, as well as media outlets CNN and Politico, conspired to defame him by implying that the leaked laptop material was tied to Russian efforts to meddle in the 2020 election.

Each side made arguments aimed to convince Sussex County Superior Court Judge Robert Robinson to rule in their favor ahead of further depositions, which could include members of the Biden family, followed by a potential jury trial.

The 2020 airing of Hunter Biden's personal data has partially fueled congressional Republicans' unsuccessful efforts to paint Hunter Biden's finances as evidence of improprieties by his father. That effort has evolved to the current impeachment inquiry by congressional Republicans seeking to uncover evidence that the president himself financially benefited from family members' foreign business dealings.

Allegations central to the inquiry were discredited last week when federal prosecutors charged an ex-FBI informant with lying about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings. Prosecutors also said the informant had been in contact with Russian intelligence.

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden himself is facing federal criminal tax charges in California and federal firearms felonies in Delaware. His attorneys in that case are making arguments about his private data as part of Biden's defense. 

But while the laptop has been a part of national drama for years now, Thursday's arguments centered on specific questions pertaining to Delaware law: Is Mac Isaac a public figure? Can a statement that doesn't mention him also damage his reputation? Did Hunter Biden's attorneys wait too long to raise their legal claim?

Biden's motion for summary judgment

Much of the debate in the Georgetown courtroom Thursday focused on Hunter Biden's attorneys' efforts to have the judge rule that a statement the president's son made in a 2021 CBS interview regarding the laptop does not meet the legal standard for defamation.

The claim centers on this statement by Hunter Biden in that interview:  "There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me. It could be that I was hacked. It could be that it was the – that it was Russian intelligence. It could be that it was stolen from me. Or that there was a laptop stolen from me."

Ron Poliquin, Mac Isaac's attorney, told the judge that the statement implies "false, criminal and nefarious scenarios" tied to Mac Isaac's distribution of the data when Hunter Biden knew the data was derived from his abandonment of the laptop at Mac Isaac's shop.

Pressing Poliquin, the judge described the contested statement as "lawyerly," noting the repetitive use of the word "could."

Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden's attorney, told the judge that the statement is comprised of protected statements of opinion and does not mention Mac Isaac and therefore cannot meet the legal standard for defamation.

Lowell emphasized the "conjecture was not without basis," noting a letter penned around the same time by 51 former senior intelligence officials stating that the leaked emails had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."

In court filings, Hunter Biden does not admit that Mac Isaac possessed "any particular laptop" belonging to him, but acknowledges that Mac Isaac obtained some of his data and distributed it to others.

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Lowell noted media reports that another of Hunter Biden's laptops had been stolen in 2018 and that he left another at an addiction treatment center in 2019, raising the possibility that his data could have also been accessed outside of Mac Isaac's distribution. It is a hypothetical that Mac Isaac agreed in a deposition could be possible, Lowell said.

He said this context shows that Hunter Biden was not implying anything specific about Mac Isaac in the interview.

Poliquin told the judge it was clear from the context of the interview that Hunter Biden was referring specifically to the laptop contents Mac Isaac distributed and that the statement was aimed at damaging his client's reputation.

There was also the question of whether Mac Isaac should be considered a public figure under the law, which would mean he would have to meet a higher legal standard to demonstrate he was defamed.

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Poliquin argued that Mac Isaac distributed the data to Trump's attorney, the FBI and others out of genuine public policy concerns related to the ongoing impeachment of Donald Trump at the time and intended to remain out of the spotlight.

Lowell said that assertion is belied by the fact that he distributed the data, including pornographic pictures, widely to individuals he would have known would make it public. He since has made dozens of media appearances and wrote a book about the situation, Lowell noted.

Mac Isaac was inadvertently identified as a source of Hunter Biden's data in an October 2020 New York Post article that sought to conceal his identity as the source of what it described as "smoking gun emails," but included information about his Trolley Square shop in documents attached to the story. Weeks before the election, the article was the first wide public airing of Hunter Biden's data.

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Poliquin said the judge should allow the case to continue so attorneys may gather more information. Mac Isaac has sought to subpoena communications including those of President Joe Biden. Lowell argued that would be pointless given the speculative nature of the contested statement.

"There is no amount of discovery that can make the phrase 'could' be anything other than 'could,'" Lowell told the judge.

Mac Isaac's motion to dismiss Hunter Biden's claims

The parties also argued whether the judge should dismiss Hunter Biden's claims that Mac Isaac intruded upon and violated his privacy by distributing his personal data.

In legal briefs, Mac Isaac's attorneys made several arguments claiming that his combing through Hunter Biden's personal data is not a violation of Delaware law. In court Thursday, Poliquin argued only that when Hunter Biden filed his countersuit in March 2023, it was too late to make claims about Mac Isaac's handling of his data starting in 2019.

The argument centers on Delaware's two-year statute of limitations for such claims and when those two years began to tick away. In short, Delaware law states that the clock begins to tick when the actions that comprise the alleged violations are discovered or should have been discovered.

Mac Isaac said he received the laptop and began combing through Hunter Biden's information in April 2019. Over the next year, he distributed copies of the data to various people. In October 2020, the New York Post published the first media account of Hunter Biden's personal data.

Poliquin argued that the publishing of that article would have put Hunter Biden on notice, the two-year clock began to tick and thus the 2023 claim by the president's son is too late.

Lowell, Biden's attorney, pointed to Mac Isaac's November 2022 book as the appropriate starting point for the two-year clock, arguing it included previously unknown details about Mac Isaac's intrusion into Hunter Biden's private life.

Before that book, he couldn't have known that Mac Isaac watched pornographic videos included in the data and rummaged through Hunter Biden's financial documents. He also couldn't have known the extent to which Mac Isaac distributed the data, Lowell argued.

Lowell also ran off a litany of public appearances, television interviews and such that occurred as recently as last year and in which Mac Isaac has discussed the data contents as well as his actions to access it.

"He has created a continuum of actions that creates damages," Lowell told the judge.

The judge stated he would issue a written ruling on the motions, but cautioned that would likely not come until later in March due to his caseload.

CNN and Politico move to dismiss

Mac Isaac claims that Hunter Biden, CNN and Politico conspired to defame him and conspired to "kill the laptop story" and "knowingly present information to the public to make the public believe the laptop story is Russian disinformation."

The argument centers on an October 2020 CNN interview with U.S. Rep. Adam B. Schiff, who was then the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, about the potential connections of the laptop data to Russian disinformation campaigns.

It also claims as defamatory a CNN article from around the same time that reported on a letter written by an FBI official, stating that official "suggested" that a review into potential Russian disinformation connections to the laptop was continuing.

Additionally, it states that a headline published in Politico defamed Mac Isaac. The article characterized a letter written by former intelligence officials after the New York Post article with the headline "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say."

Attorneys for both of the media entities argued that the contested articles and interviews do not name Mac Isaac, are the protected reporting of public officials' statements and cannot be considered defamation.

The judge also reserved judgment in the media entities' motions to dismiss.

Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com.

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This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Delaware judge hears arguments in laptop lawsuit filed by Hunter Biden