Hunter Biden is exploiting his family's ties to the attorney general of Delaware to push her office to investigate the computer shop owner who first brought his abandoned laptop to light.
In a letter Wednesday, Biden attorney Abbe Lowell urged Delaware attorney general Kathy Jennings to investigate John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of a Delaware computer repair shop who turned Biden’s laptop over to the FBI in 2019. Lowell claims Isaac’s handling of the laptop "resulted in the exposure, exploitation, and manipulation of Mr. Biden’s private and personal information." He said it warrants "a full investigation" and "may merit prosecution."
"It is not a common thing for a private person and his counsel to seek someone else being investigated, but the actions and motives here require it," Lowell wrote to Jennings.
Biden’s aggressive new legal strategy could pose conflict of interest issues should the attorney general take up the probe. Jennings had served under the president’s late son, Beau Biden, when he was Delaware attorney general. She touted an endorsement from President Joe Biden during her 2018 campaign.
"I’ve known Joe, Jill, and the Biden family for most of my life. Joe is one of the kindest and most genuine people I’ve ever known," Jennings wrote in an April 2019 Facebook post, which also included a picture of her sandwiched between Joe and Jill Biden.
One of Jennings’s top deputies, Alexander Mackler, is even closer to the Biden family. He served as deputy counsel to then-Vice President Biden until 2016. He is also on close personal terms with Hunter Biden, exchanging hundreds of emails with the first son and his business associates over the years, according to Hunter’s laptop.
"Love you brother," he wrote to Hunter Biden in Oct. 2018.
Both Jennings and Mackler have maintained their connections to the president. Jennings visited the White House on Nov. 8, 2021, according to White House visitor logs. Mackler has visited four times, meeting with top Biden adviser Steve Ricchetti on March 28, 2022. He visited Biden in the White House residence on April 11, 2022, visitor logs show.
Hunter Biden is sending out the letters as his allies in Washington, D.C., have ramped up their fight against Republican investigations of his business dealings. Biden sent a similar letter to the Justice Department requesting an investigation into Mac Isaac. The Justice Department is investigating Hunter Biden over his taxes, foreign business dealings, and other issues.
Hunter Biden hired Mac Isaac to fix his computer in April 2019. After Biden failed to retrieve the device, Isaac gave it to the FBI. He later gave a copy of the computer hard drive to several Trump allies, who in turn have shared documents with journalists.
Lowell alleges that Isaac did not have permission to access the laptop and that he violated numerous laws by disseminating it. He is also calling for criminal investigations of former president Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Garrett Ziegler, a former Trump White House aide who operates a nonprofit group, Marco Polo, that has published the contents of Biden’s laptop online.
While Biden takes an aggressive tone in the letter, he all but admits that he left the computer for repairs at Isaac’s shop. Biden had not previously confirmed that the laptop is his or that he left it at Isaac’s store. He has instead suggested that someone—including the Russians—may have stolen or hacked his computer.
"There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me," Biden said in 2021. "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."
In October 2020, Joe Biden’s campaign suggested that the laptop may have been stolen or hacked. Fifty former intelligence officials, many allied with Joe Biden, claimed in an infamous open letter that the release of the laptop had all the hallmarks of a Russian operation. Facebook and Twitter censored stories about laptop emails out of concern that the laptop was hacked.
Hunter has ample incentive to cast doubt on how the laptop became public.
Emails, text messages, and photos from the device provide deep insight into both Hunter’s foreign business dealings and his descent into drug and sex addiction. The Washington Free Beacon has published numerous stories about his business activity in China and Ukraine, as well as efforts to lobby the Obama-Biden administration on behalf of his foreign clients. Other records from the laptop show that Hunter Biden had access to properties where Joe Biden stored classified documents after his stint as vice president.
Jennings’s office did not respond to requests for comment.