With Hunter Biden, laptop repairman lawsuits tossed, what's next for president's son?

A Delaware judge has dismissed the dueling lawsuits filed by Hunter Biden and the former Trolley Square computer repairman who 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.

The dismissal of that civil case comes as Hunter Biden is pending sentencing in his two criminal cases in December.

In the civil litigation, Biden claimed 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, claimed 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.

Those legal claims were dismissed recently by a Sussex County Superior Court judge presiding over the case, effectively ending the lawsuits, pending appeals.

The dismissal comes as the president’s son recently pleaded guilty to tax crimes in California, averting a trial like the one in which he was found guilty of firearms-related crimes in Delaware earlier this year.

Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, departs the federal court with his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, while being escorted by security, on Tuesday, June 4, 2024, the second day of his trial on criminal gun charges in Wilmington.
Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, departs the federal court with his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, while being escorted by security, on Tuesday, June 4, 2024, the second day of his trial on criminal gun charges in Wilmington.

Here’s a rundown of why his lawsuit against Mac Isaac was dismissed and what’s to come for the president’s son in court through the end of the year.

Laptop lawsuits dismissed

Mac Isaac’s claim against Biden centered around a CBS interview in April 2021 in which Biden stated: “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.”

Mac Isaac claimed the statement was defamatory as they painted him as a Russian agent and a thief and maligned his business and profession. He argued that he could eventually prove Biden knew he was lying because he was discussing the laptop he left at his computer repair shop.

However, Judge Robert Robinson Jr. ruled the statement could not be considered defamation under Delaware law because the statement did not name or reference Mac Isaac or his business directly or indirectly and a “reasonable listener” wouldn’t infer the statement referred specifically to Mac Isaac.

When Mac Isaac originally filed his lawsuit, Hunter Biden filed his counterclaim for invasion of privacy against Mac Isaac in March 2023.

However, the judge ruled that the two-year statute of limitations governing the invasion of privacy claims started when Biden knew that information from his laptop had been publicly revealed. In the judge\'s view, that came in October 2020 when the New York Post published the first article centered on the laptop content.

And so, the statute of limitations expired in October 2022, several months before Biden lodged his claims against Mac Isaac, the judge ruled.

The ruling also dismissed Mac Isaac’s legal claims against CNN and Politico over their coverage of the laptop contents, as well as a claim against the campaign committee for President Joe Biden.

Ron Poliquin, Mac Isaac’s attorney, said he intends to appeal the ruling.

“Hunter Biden lied and needs to be held accountable,” Poliquin said in a written statement.

Plea entered in Hunter Biden's tax case

The ruling in Hunter Biden’s civil litigation came about a month after he pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in California.

Biden was set to go to trial on the charges but entered a last-minute plea agreement to avoid what likely would have been another embarrassing parade of personal witnesses delving into a period of his life when he was addicted to crack cocaine.

In all, he pleaded guilty to three felonies and six misdemeanors on charges that he failed to pay $1.4 million in taxes from 2016 to 2019. Biden said in a statement that "like millions of Americans," he failed to pay his taxes on time and \"for that I am responsible.\"

He is set to be sentenced on Dec. 16 in that case. His charges carry a maximum sentence of 17 years but he will likely be granted a far less severe punishment.

Delaware sentencing hearing pending

Days before his sentencing in the tax case, he will again appear for sentencing in the Wilmington federal court where he was convicted of federal firearms charges in a dramatic, week-long trial earlier this summer.

The evidence included a line of his former lovers and family members who testified about his struggles with crack cocaine addiction − a struggle he\'s documented himself in a memoir that prosecutors excerpted for the jury. Biden has said he has been sober for years.

In that case, he was convicted of three federal gun charges for lying about his drug use when he bought a handgun from a Talleyville gun shop in 2018.

Those charges carry a maximum of 25 years in prison, though first-time, nonviolent offenders typically get much shorter sentences. Federal guidelines call for a sentence of 15 to 21 months for Biden.

It's rare for prosecutors to even bring such charges in Biden\'s circumstances: without some aggravating crime like using the gun as part of drug distribution or actually hurting someone. Biden was not accused of anything like that.

It’s likely prosecutors and defense attorneys will file memos in the coming month outlining what sentence they will argue for. Ultimately, it will be up to Judge Maryellen Noreika to sentence Biden in a hearing set for Dec. 12 in Wilmington.

Reporting from USA TODAY contributed to this article.

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

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: What's next for Hunter Biden as laptop repairman lawsuits dismissed