The owner of a Delaware computer repair shop, who alerted the FBI to the contents of a laptop reportedly owned by President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, is suing a politician and several news media outlets for allegedly defaming him.
John Paul Mac Isaac said Hunter’s MacBook Pro was dropped off at his shop in April 2019 and never retrieved. Isaac contacted the authorities after finding emails on the laptop that suggested that the then-Vice President Joe Biden had met with Vadym Pozharskyi, advisor to Burisma, on whose board Hunter Biden served.
The New York Post was temporarily censored by Facebook and Twitter for breaking the Hunter Biden laptop story in the run-up to the 2020 United States presidential election.
While the veracity of the Post’s reporting was initially questioned by many media outlets, in March 2022, the New York Times and The Washington Post reported that some of the emails from the cache of files on the laptop had been authenticated by security experts.
In his lawsuit, Isaac claims that House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff and media outlets CNN, Politico and the Daily Beast falsely accused him of being a hacker and a Russian asset.
Isaac said: “It was pretty quick out of the gate that I was labeled a hacker and then, after Adam Schiff and 51 intelligence experts decided to pen a letter and tell the rest of the American people I was a Russian asset, things have gone downhill from there.”
According to Isaac, Schiff falsely stated on CNN that the laptop story was “a smear campaign” being pushed by Russia to improve President Donald Trump’s chances of reelection.
The suit accuses Politico of falsely stating that dozens of former intelligence officials had branded the laptop story “Russian disinfo” and claims The Daily Beast accused Isaac of stealing the laptop.
Isaac claims that the alleged defamation of his character by the defendants caused him to lose so much business that he was eventually forced to close his computer repair shop. He is seeking at least $1m in damages.