Left: Hunter Biden (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite). Right: Garrett Ziegler talks Hunter Biden on YouTube (YouTube/Reporter.London).
One month after a federal judge in California declined to throw out Hunter Biden’s data “hacking” lawsuit over a former Trump administration aide’s posting of the “Biden Laptop Report,” attorneys for Garrett Ziegler and his Marco Polo website are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to reverse the denial.
The notice of appeal, filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, seeks to undo U.S. District Judge Hernan Vera’s ruling in June that rejected each of Ziegler’s arguments for dismissal.
Garrett Ziegler notice of appeal.
Vera, a 2023 appointee of President Joe Biden who three years earlier donated “at least $1,600” to Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, continued to preside over the lawsuit after another 2023 Biden-appointed federal judge concluded in April that his recusal was not warranted, since there was no “evidence of bias stemming from [the] extrajudicial factors” Ziegler highlighted.
Ziegler, who worked for former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro as associate director in the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, has maintained that Hunter Biden filed a retaliatory lawsuit that amounted to a “frivolous and vexatious” Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP suit) under California law. He has denied Biden’s Computer Fraud and Abuse Act “hacking” and data manipulation claims, and defended the posting of the “Biden Laptop Report” as protected free speech under the First Amendment.
When Vera tossed out the motion to dismiss, he wrote that the anti-SLAPP statute Ziegler cited “simply does not apply” to federal claims, a particular part of the ruling that Hunter Biden subsequently cited to demand $18,000 in attorney’s fees for having to fight a “frivolous” motion.
The judge otherwise rejected the defendant’s challenges of jurisdiction, standing, venue, and the argument that Biden failed to state a claim.
“[T]he Court concludes that Plaintiff has sufficiently alleged the necessary elements of his claims for under federal and state computer fraud statutes. Defendants’ objections raise factual questions that are best addressed in post-discovery briefing,” the judge said.
After the ruling Ziegler reportedly said the rejection was not surprising since Vera was “appointed by the plaintiff’s daddy[.]”
“[B]ut we will eventually prevail,” Ziegler said, according to Newsweek. “All we’ve done is tell the truth, and no one has accused us otherwise.”
It’s not yet clear what Ziegler will argue on appeal to secure the ultimate win he predicted, but Law&Crime reached out to his attorneys Robert Tyler and Nathan Klein for comment.
On another Biden litigation front over the weekend, the president’s son dropped a “revenge porn” lawsuit that he just recently filed against Fox News. ABC News reported, citing an unnamed person said to be familiar with the rationale, that Biden plans on suing “new defendants” down the line.
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