Hunter Biden sues Rudy Giuliani, attorney over releasing laptop data

Sept. 26 (UPI) -- Hunter Biden filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and his former attorney Bob Costello, alleging the men misused his personal computer data from a laptop.

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 which became a Republican talking point during the 2020 presidential campaign and has been used to attack the younger Biden and by extension President Joe Biden.

"For the past many months and even years, defendants have dedicated an extraordinary amount of time and energy toward looking for, hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating, and generally obsessing over data that they were given that was taken or stolen," the lawsuit said.

The suit does not confirm that the laptop belonged to Biden but notes that "some of the data that defendants obtained, copied and proceeded to hack into and tamper with belongs to him."

It claims Giuliani and Costello used Biden's username to access the data and cites public comments in which Giuliani said he had access to the data including a podcast appearance where held up the laptop.

"He proceeded to brag about having copied [Hunter Biden's] data onto his own computer and about having accessed, analyzed and manipulated the transferred data," the lawsuit states.

Biden's suit further alleges that some of the data that was shared was "manipulated, altered and damaged before" Giuliani and Costello received it.

An independent analysis from Minneapolis-based Computer Forensics Services found no evidence that the user data had been modified, fabricated or tampered with.

Biden's attorney Abbe Lowell sent a letter to 14 Republic officials and conservative media personalities, who had accused the younger Biden of corruption, telling them to maintain their records in the event of a lawsuit. Hunter Biden recently sued the IRS and the former White House aide.

The lawsuit is another sign of mounting legal trouble for Giuliani, which includes his defense of former Trump in trying to overturn results in the 2020 presidential election. He was recently sued by his former attorneys for not paying legal bills.