Hunter Biden sues former Trump aide tied to laptop hack

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Attorneys for Hunter Biden have filed a lawsuit accusing a former Trump-era White House aide of launching a “sustained, unhinged and obsessed campaign” against President Joe Biden’s son and the Biden family, including hacking the alleged contents of a laptop. Since leaving Donald Trump’s administration, Garrett Ziegler has “devoted most of his waking time and energy to accessing, tampering with, manipulating, altering, copying and otherwise using” allegedly compromised computer and iPhone data, emails and photos, according to the lawsuit filed in US District Court in California on 13 September. Since leaving the Trump administration, Mr Ziegler’s group has published thousands of emails and photos allegedly from the laptop, what Mr Ziegler has called a “modern Rosetta Stone of white and blue collar crime under the patina of ‘the Delaware Way.’” “Defendants not only admit to accessing, tampering with, manipulating and copying Plaintiff’s data from their claimed Plaintiff’s ‘laptop’ computer without Plaintiff’s authorization or consent, they regularly brag about their illegal activities in interviews with members of the media, on social media, and on right-wing podcasts,” according to the lawsuit. Mr Ziegler told Politico that the lawsuit is “not worth the paper it’s written on.” Federal prosecutors investigating the younger Biden had reached a deal this summer to resolve the criminal probe without going to trial on charges stemming from tax and gun crimes, a deal that fell apart under scrutiny from a federal judge.