Hunter Biden (Ap Photo/Patrick Semansky), Garrett Ziegler (Sky News Australia/YouTube screengrab)
A former policy analyst for then-President Donald Trump on Thursday filed a motion to dismiss Hunter Biden’s Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFFA) lawsuit, a California federal case characterizing Garrett Ziegler as a “zealot” with a “right-wing agenda” hell-bent on exposing the “Biden Laptop” even if it meant “hacking into” an “encrypted iPhone backup.”
Ziegler and his attorney Robert H. Tyler have countered that the lawsuit by President Joe Biden’s son should be dismissed for four different reasons, including that it is a retaliatory strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP suit) seeking to chill “protected activity” — namely, “speech or non-speech conduct made or done ‘in connection with a public issue or an issue of public interest.””
“Plaintiff filed this action in retaliation against Defendants for publishing information, media, and emails originating from the files of the infamous ‘Biden Laptop.’ The Plaintiff, a public figure and son of the current U.S. President, abandoned his laptop computer at a Delaware repair shop. The shop owner turned the Biden Laptop over to the FBI on or around October 2019 after discovering disturbing material,” the motion began. “Soon after, media outlets gained access to emails and documents found on the Biden Laptop, resulting in a media storm of allegations against Hunter Biden and President Biden regarding potential foreign compromise.”
When Hunter Biden sued in September, he alleged that Ziegler and his group ICU LLC engaged in “illegal activities to advance his right-wing agenda” and “waged a sustained, unhinged and obsessed campaign against Plaintiff and the entire Biden family for more than two years,” culminating in the “accessing, tampering with, manipulating, altering, copying and damaging computer data that they do not own and that they claim to have obtained from hacking into Plaintiff’s iPhone data and from scouring a copy of the hard drive of what they claim to be Plaintiff’s ‘laptop’ computer.”
Ziegler’s lawyer responded Thursday by saying Hunter Biden has failed to state a claim under the CFAA, lacks standing to sue, lacks personal and specific jurisdiction, and that the president’s son has filed a SLAPP suit.
“Plaintiff cannot demonstrate meritorious claims either,” the motion said.
Ziegler recalled how he went to Delaware laptop repairman John Paul Mac Isaac’s business with an external hard drive in April 2019 to copy files from the “Biden Laptop” at issue.
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“In the process of copying the files, Mac Isaac noticed alarming evidence on Plaintiff’s computer and eventually contacted the FBI. The FBI served Mac Isaac on December 9, 2019 with a Grand Jury Subpoena electronics remain in possession of the FBI, who analyzed the electronics as part of a criminal investigation that was included in the Congressional testimony of IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary A. Shapley, Jr.,” the motion said. “Information found on the Biden Laptop is now relevant in a criminal case involving alleged tax crimes by Plaintiff and is pending before this Court.”
When the FBI took the laptop and external hard drive, Mac Isaac sent “a copy of the laptop data” to Rudy Giuliani’s then-attorney Robert Costello in late August 2020. Just two months later, one month before the election, the New York Post posted a story about the laptop, the motion said.
When Hunter Biden countersued Mac Isaac in May, he accused the laptop repairman of privacy violations through the “knowing and intentional distribution of Mr. Biden’s personal and sensitive data […] to try and expose Mr. Biden’s data to those that he knew or should have known would intend to create embarrassment and harm for Mr. Biden” and to “assist then-President Trump” in his reelection campaign. Biden alleged Giuliani and Bernard Kerik provided a copy of the data — “more than 120,000 emails, photos, and other files that he claimed belonged to Mr. Biden” — to Ziegler, files that were then uploaded to the website Marco Polo.
Ziegler, for his part, disputed that any hacking occurred.
“Plaintiff selectively cites to Defendant Ziegler’s December 2022 remarks about decrypting a specific file which stored the passcode to the iPhone backup file, both of which were on Defendants’ copy of the Laptop. The Complaint falsely suggests Defendants ‘hacked’ into Plaintiff’s iPhone backup,” the motion to dismiss said. “Defendants received a copy of Plaintiff’s iPhone backup file which existed as part of the files. When Defendants received the external hard drive, it contained passcodes, which allowed access to the iPhone backup file.”
The defendant argued that Biden’s lawsuit is an impermissible SLAPP action meant to “punish” Ziegler for engaging in “protected activity” on “a matter of significant public interest” regarding the president’s son, a public figure.
Read the motion to dismiss here.
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