Left: Garrett Ziegler talks Hunter Biden on YouTube (YouTube/Reporter.London). Right: Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, speaks in Washington in 2023 (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File).
A former Trump administration policy analyst who admittedly published the “Biden Laptop Report” online in 2022 after receiving a hard drive from Rudy Giuliani has responded to Hunter Biden’s attempt to make him pay close to $18,000 in attorney’s fees as a computer fraud lawsuit moves forward in California federal court.
Attorneys for defendant Garrett Ziegler, who recently launched an appeal of a dismissal denial, said Thursday that Biden’s request for attorney’s fees “should be denied entirely” because the defense motion to dismiss the “hacking” case as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP suit) under California law was in no way “frivolous,” even if the judge in the case ultimately rejected it.
In July, Biden’s lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Hernan Vera, a 2023 appointee of President Joe Biden who three years earlier donated “at least $1,600” to Biden’s 2020 campaign, to order up the attorney’s fees on the grounds that Ziegler’s team “forc[ed] Plaintiff to waste time and resources addressing anti-SLAPP arguments that were completely baseless.”
Ziegler months earlier sought Vera’s recusal, but another federal judge who handled the recusal motion ruled that the defendant had failed to show that Vera had to step aside, as there was no “evidence of bias stemming from extrajudicial factors.”
In the months that followed, Vera declined to dismiss the Biden suit against Ziegler and ICU LLC, the corporate name for Ziegler’s Marco Polo website, writing that Biden “sufficiently alleged the necessary elements of his claims for [sic] under federal and state computer fraud statutes.”
Of relevant note, Vera did not find that Biden’s lawsuit was meant to chill free speech, since the “anti-SLAPP statute simply does not apply” to federal claims and the “anti-SLAPP argument lacks merit.”
“Were it otherwise, every data hack of a public figure would be fair game. That is not what California’s anti-SLAPP allows,” the judge wrote.
Ziegler has now answered by saying the anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss was “not frivolous or solely intended to cause unnecessary delay as is required for a prevailing plaintiff to recover attorneys’ fees[.]”
If anything, he said, Biden’s motion represents “a textbook example of ‘making a mountain out of a molehill”” — and the plaintiff should not be awarded fees since the anti-SLAPP “legal arguments were made in good faith and could have resulted in a dismissal of the State law claims.”
While Hunter Biden alleges illegal “hacking” of “intimate” photos and data manipulation were meant to harass and humiliate him, Ziegler has defended the online posting as protected First Amendment activity.
Biden’s cease and desist letter (court exhibit)
Ziegler, who previously worked for former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro as associate director in the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, delivered some broadsides against the “slew of insults” made in the opening lines of Biden’s lawsuit, words that the defendant maintains only tend to support the argument that the plaintiff is trying to chill “constitutionally protected speech” through litigation.
“Plaintiff has selectively elected to litigate claims against the Defendants because they are the parties that published the Biden Laptop Report. Plaintiff’s complaint is a textbook case of masquerading seemingly legitimate litigation with the goal of chilling Defendants’ free speech rights,” Ziegler’s lawyers said. “Plaintiff falsely accuses Defendants of being zealots and obsessed with Plaintiff. Defendants’ only conduct was to research material from a third party which resulted in the publication of the Biden Laptop Report. The acts Plaintiff complained of were done in furtherance of Defendants’ right to free speech.”
“Contrary to Plaintiff’s claims, these paragraphs stand as evidence of Plaintiff’s intent to attack Defendants for publishing the Biden Laptop Report and holding an antagonistic position towards Plaintiff,” the defendant added. “The complaint underscores Defendants’ concerns that this litigation is about silencing the Defendants, not vindicating any alleged violations of the Plaintiff’s legal rights.”
The defendant also expressed doubts that Biden’s lawyers really had to spend 8.28 hours “opposing the anti-SLAPP arguments.”
“There are no time sheets, invoices, or even a basic description of the services performed,” the response said. “It is quite possible Plaintiff seeks recovery for work that is not recoverable, or which could have been done by paralegals or newer associates at a lower rate.”
Read the response here.
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