Man who handed Hunter Biden laptop to reporters, feds sues Twitter
The computer repair shop owner responsible for handing over Hunter Biden’s laptop to the feds and numerous journalists, including the New York Post, has sued Twitter over its claim that he possessed “hacked materials.”
John Paul Mac Isaac of Delaware filed the lawsuit on Thursday in the Southern District of Florida, contending that he was forced to shut down his business in part due to Twitter’s labeling of the contents of the legally obtained laptop as “hacked materials.”
Mac Isaac argues that the label damaged his reputation and forced him to shut down his business. He filed a prior lawsuit, also claiming defamation and demanding $500 million in damages. That case was thrown out in December over lack of jurisdiction, reported the Washington Examiner.
In his new lawsuit, Mac Isaac is trying to bypass the jurisdiction issue. He says that the value of Twitter’s damage to his reputation was greater than $75,000 and that the exact award amount could be determined after a trial. He is calling upon Twitter to make a public retraction of its false statements and to issue a public apology to him.
“Plaintiff is not a hacker and the information obtained from the computer does not constitute hacked materials because Plaintiff lawfully gained access to the computer, first with the permission of its owner, Biden, and then, after Biden failed to retrieve the recovered data despite Plaintiff’s reuses, in accordance with the Mac Shop’s abandoned property police,” Mac Isaac’s lawyer said in the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court.
“Plaintiff, as a direct result of Defendant Twitter’s actions and statements, is now widely considered a hacker.”
In October, the New York Post published multiple reports on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop after it obtained a copy of the hard drive from former president Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani says that he obtained the hard drive from Mac Isaac’s repair shop. The computer store owner said that he also provided a copy of the hard drive to the FBI, after the younger Biden had left the laptop in his shop in April 2019 and did not return to pick it back up.
Hunter Biden has not made any comments about the laptop, but has not denied that it belonged to him.
The New York Post reported that emails on the laptop showed evidence of a meeting between Hunter Biden, his father, who was the Vice President at the time, and a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm called Burisma. Joe Biden denies that any such meeting ever took place. Emails on the laptop also suggested that Hunter Biden had engaged in dealings with Chinese businesses aligned with the Chinese Communist Party.
Twitter temporarily banned the New York Post account after it published a link to the article, and suspended numerous journalists and Twitter accounts that linked to the reporting, alleging that the publication had violated Twitter policies on hacked materials.
“Twitter knew or should have known that its statement that the New York Post’s story contained hacked materials would cause harm to the Plaintiff,” Mac Isaac’s lawyer stated. “The statements allege that Plaintiff committed crimes including (but not limited to) computer hacking of the son of the Democratic Party nominee, now President, Joe Biden. The implication of an attempt to undermine American democracy and the 2020 presidential election is obvious.”
The Washington Examiner published the full text of Mac Isaacs’s lawsuit against Twitter.
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