WASHINGTON — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy vowed Thursday to “get to the bottom” of issues related to Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop — after the first son effectively confirmed it was his by requesting criminal investigations of a computer repairman and others who distributed its contents.
McCarthy (R-Calif.) was asked at a Capitol press conference how Hunter’s new demand for federal and state criminal probes would impact House Republican investigations of President Biden’s role in Hunter and first brother James Biden’s international business deals.
“I don’t think any way, I think it’s delaying in its tactic. I think it is an attorney tactic to try to stop something,” McCarthy said.
“The one thing I will say from that, he’s acknowledging now it is his laptop. So he was a little slower than the rest of the papers and Twitter and the others, but now we know that it is true,” the House speaker went on.
“And I think the investigations here, the uniqueness is you’ll have Republicans and Democrats and we’ll get to the bottom of all that.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment directly Thursday on Hunter Biden’s request that his father’s subordinates at the Justice Department launch criminal investigations — but said the elder Biden believes in “independent” agency action.
“This is a president, and I said this before, that believes in the independence of the Department of Justice, or any, any enforcement investigations and he’s been very clear about that,” Jean-Pierre said at her regular briefing. “He believes that it should not be politicized, as he has said over the past couple years, starting in the campaign, and he believes that any investigation should be independent.”
Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell attempted to put the genie back in the bottle Thursday afternoon by claiming that Hunter wasn’t confirming the authenticity of the laptop when he asked for criminal investigations of computer repairman John Paul Mac Isaac and others — including former President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, who provided laptop files to The Post in October 2020.
“These letters do not confirm Mac Isaac’s or others’ versions of a so-called laptop,” Lowell backpedaled. “They address their conduct of seeking, manipulating and disseminating what they allege to be Mr. Biden’s personal data, wherever they claim to have gotten it.”
However, Lowell didn’t dispute that the laptop was dropped off by Hunter at Mac Isaac’s former Delaware shop in his Wednesday letters to Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings and US Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew Olsen, though he did suggest some files may have been manipulated.
In fact, Lowell wrote to Jennings that “Mac Isaac chose to work with President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer to weaponize Mr. Biden’s personal computer data against his father, Joseph R. Biden, by unlawfully causing the provision of Mr. Biden’s personal data to the New York Post.”
“This failed dirty political trick directly resulted in the exposure, exploitation, and manipulation of Mr. Biden’s private and personal information,” Lowell wrote. “Mac Isaac’s intentional, reckless and unlawful conduct allowed for hundreds of gigabytes of Mr. Biden’s personal data, without any discretion, to be circulated around the Internet.”
Lowell also wrote that “[t]he facts and circumstances indicate that Mr. Mac Isaac and others with whom he was involved or conspired with either had no authorization to access, copy and disseminate Mr. Biden’s data, or went beyond the basic authorization that a request to repair would involve.”
In his letter to Olsen, Lowell wrote, again without contesting that the laptop was Hunter’s, that “by Mr. Mac Isaac’s own admission, he caused to be transported in interstate commerce at least two external hard drives containing Mr. Biden’s computer data.”
Lowell claimed that Mac Isaac and others may have violated Delaware laws against theft, possession of stolen property, misuse of computer system information, unauthorized access to a computer system, destruction of computer equipment and theft of computer services.
The first son’s new lawyer also claimed Mac Isaac and others may have violated federal laws against “intentionally access[ing] a computer without authorization,” transporting stolen property and releasing legally protected information.
The Post’s first laptop bombshell in October 2020 revealed that Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, emailed Hunter in 2015 to thank him for the “opportunity to meet your father” — directly contradicting Biden’s 2019 claim that he’d “never spoken” with his son about “his overseas business dealings.”
Hunter earned up to $1 million per year to serve on the Burisma board from 2014 to 2019, beginning when his father was put in charge of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy. Visitor logs show Joe Biden met with his son’s partner Devon Archer in 2014 around the time both Hunter Biden and Archer joined the Burisma board.
Social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter initially censored The Post’s reporting as prominent Democrats claimed the laptop was Russian disinformation. The Biden campaign vaguely denied that the Joe Biden-Pozharskyi meeting occurred.
Joe Biden even claimed on Oct. 22, 2020, at the second and final presidential debate that The Post’s reporting on Hunter’s laptop was “a Russian plan” and that Giuliani was “being fed information that is Russian.”
Hunter later said in 2021 — after his dad became president — that the laptop “certainly” could be his, but that it also could be from “Russian intelligence.”
Mac Isaac says Hunter Biden failed to retrieve the laptop from his shop and shared paperwork showing he provided the original hard drive to the FBI in December 2019. After not hearing any updates from the feds, he provided a copy of the device to Giuliani’s attorney Bob Costello ahead of the 2020 election and contacted the office of then-Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).
Mac Isaac has produced a copy of a sales contract showing an abandonment clause that he says gave him legal ownership of the laptop when it was not retrieved.
Further reporting by The Post has corroborated key details in laptop documents. For example, additional records revealed that Joe Biden attended a 2015 DC dinner one day before the Burisma exec’s email was sent. A group of his son’s associates, including Pozharskyi and a Kazakhstani trio that posed for a photo with the Bidens, attended.
Hunter also invited to the dinner Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina and her husband, ex-Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov. A 2020 report from Republican-led Senate committees alleges that Baturina in 2014 paid $3.5 million to a firm associated with Hunter Biden. Baturina is one of a dwindling number of Russian oligarchs yet to face Biden administration sanctions over Russia’s more than 11-month-old invasion of Ukraine.
A second October 2020 bombshell from The Post described communications about Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim Biden’s business venture with the company CEFC China Energy. A May 13, 2017, email recovered from the laptop said the “big guy” would get 10% of the deal.
Hunter and James Biden earned $4.8 million from CEFC China Energy in 2017 and 2018, according to the Washington Post’s later review of Hunter Biden laptop documents.
Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski alleges that he discussed the CEFC deal directly with Joe Biden in May 2017. Bobulinski and another former Hunter Biden partner, James Gilliar, identified the president as the big guy
An October 2017 email identifies Joe Biden as a participant in a call about CEFC’s attempt to purchase US natural gas.
Republicans have accused Biden of being too soft on China on issues such as determining the origins of COVID-19, which killed more than 1 million Americans, and stopping fentanyl exports, which killed about 196,000 Americans in 2018-2021 alone.
In a separate Chinese venture, online business records indicate the first son still owns a 10% stake in Chinese state-backed BHR Partners, which says it manages $2.1 billion in assets, despite his father’s insistence there would be no family-business-related conflicts of interest during his presidency.
Hunter co-founded BHR Partners in 2013 within weeks of joining then-Vice President Biden aboard Air Force Two on an official trip to Beijing, according to the Wall Street Journal. Hunter introduced his dad to BHR CEO Jonathan Li in a hotel lobby and Joe Biden later wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children.
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee is looking into the Biden family’s international business relationships as well as Hunter Biden’s mysterious new art career.
Hunter Biden reportedly is under investigation by the US attorney’s office in Delaware for possible tax fraud, money laundering, illegal foreign lobbying and lying on a gun-purchase form. An associate, Hollywood lawyer and “sugar brother” Kevin Morris, last year paid off a roughly $2 million tax bill owed by Hunter in a bid to avoid criminal charges. The terms of that gift or loan remain unclear.