So much for having “all the hallmarks” of Russian disinformation. So much for “it could be that I was hacked.”
Almost four full years after Big Tech suppressed The Post’s bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden’s abandoned “laptop from hell” with its evidence of influence-peddling, drug use, and other lurid activity, the device will take center stage in the first son’s federal trial on gun charges next month.
Special counsel David Weiss’ team made clear that it intends to use data from the notorious hard drive as evidence against the now-54-year-old.
“The defendant’s laptop is real (it will be introduced as a trial exhibit) and it contains significant evidence of the defendant’s guilt,” prosecutor Derek Hines wrote in a scathing filing Wednesday.
Hines underscored that the laptop data the special counsel will reference is “self-authenticating” and will be “introduced with corroborating evidence at trial.”
He also noted that prosecutors plan to use information from Hunter Biden’s iCloud data that came from “two separate and independent sources” — his iPad and iPhone XR.
Prosecutors are planning to use that data in their pursuit of three charges against Hunter Biden related to illegal possession of a firearm while addicted to illicit drugs. He has pleaded not guilty
Hunter Biden has tried to cast aspersions on the authenticity of the laptop, which he dropped off at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019.
Store proprietor John Paul Mac Isaac took possession of the laptop and hard drive after trying and failing for months to notify Hunter that the device was ready to be picked up.
Once Mac Isaac saw the laptop’s contents — including emails detailing shady business deals involving then-Vice President Joe Biden other first family members and videos of Hunter Biden smoking crack and having sex with prostitutes and his work subordinates — he alerted the FBI.
The feds picked up the laptop in December 2019, but not before Mac Isaac made a copy which he gave to Robert Costello, then Rudolph Giuliani’s personal lawyer, in August 2020.
Giuliani provided The Post with a copy of the hard drive that October, with the first in a series of reports on its contents published Oct. 14.
Facebook and Twitter (now X) quickly moved to throttle sharing of the story, with Twitter even suspending The Post’s account.
That same week, 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter — possibly at the behest of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign — claiming that the laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
However, The Post’s initial reporting has been belatedly confirmed by outlets including the Washington Post, New York Times and CBS News.
Two IRS whistleblowers confirmed last year that the FBI had verified the authenticity of the abandoned laptop in November 2019 — 11 months before The Post broke the story.
Despite that, Hunter testified before the House GOP impeachment probe this past February and claimed there were reports on his laptop that were either “fabricated, hacked, stolen, or manipulated 100%.”
Hines demanded that trial judge Maryellen Noreika bar Biden from “suggesting that the electronic evidence is fabricated, manipulated, altered, or inauthentic because he has not offered any evidence supporting such a claim.”
“[T]he defendant’s theory about the laptop is a conspiracy theory with no supporting evidence,” said Hines, who noted that Hunter’s argument includes a claim “that a Russian businessman told a third-party that Biden’s devices were compromised … during his 2014 trip to Kazakhstan.
“This is yet another example of the defendant asking people to believe Russian intelligence when it suits his interests, but not to believe Russian intelligence when it doesn’t suit his interests,” the prosecutor wrote. “None of this hearsay on hearsay is evidence, and none of it demonstrates that the actual trial evidence was altered. Any questioning suggesting this would be without a foundation.”
Further, Hines went on, Hunter “has had the laptop data in its raw, original form since September 2023, but has provided the government with no evidence of its manipulation or alteration. He has not provided any evidence or information that shows that his laptop contains false information, and the government’s evidence shows the opposite.”
The Delaware trial is set to begin June 3 in Wilmington federal court.
Meanwhile, Hunter is facing another nine-count indictment out of Los Angeles for allegedly bilking Uncle Sam out of $1.4 million worth of federal income taxes between 2016 and 2019.
That trial is now slated to commence in Sept. 5, per a court order issued Wednesday.
