USA TODAY US Edition

Giuliani turns over alleged Hunter Biden files to police

Delaware police station passes device on to FBI

- Karl Baker Contributi­ng: Xerxes Wilson, Delaware Online

WILMINGTON, Del. – Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to tarnish Joe Biden’s presidenti­al campaign continued in Delaware when he visited a police station Monday to share files from what he said was Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“They’ve got a hard drive or a laptop or something to that effect. They try to turn it over to New Castle County PD. New Castle County PD calls us,” said Mat Marshall, a spokesman for Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings.

Jennings’ office gave the device to the FBI, Marshall said.

“As we’ve seen in multiple reports, (the FBI) is looking into whether these claims are credible,” he said. “In light of their investigat­ion, we’re referring it over to them now.”

A spokeswoma­n for the FBI’s Baltimore office, which oversees Delaware, declined to confirm or deny any such investigat­ion.

On Oct. 14, Delaware computer repairman John Paul Mac Isaac claimed that in April 2019, a man who identified himself as Hunter Biden brought a liquid-damaged MacBook Pro to his small repair shop.

Mac Isaac said his poor vision prevented him from personally identifyin­g the man as Biden.

In the subsequent year and a half, Mac Isaac said, a “whole lot of ” players were involved in the story of how President Donald Trump’s circle took possession last month of a copy of the hard drive.

He declined to provide details. This month, Giuliani shared the hard drive’s contents with the New York Post.

On Oct. 14, the publicatio­n ran a story that the hard drive contained emails from 2015 indicating that then-Vice President Joe Biden held a meeting with a high-ranking official at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company company whose board employed his son.

Biden’s campaign said, “No meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.”

Federal authoritie­s were investigat­ing whether a Russian influence operation was behind the disclosure of emails. In January, Area 1 Security, a computer security company in California, reported that Russia’s military intelligen­ce attempted to hack Burisma’s servers.

Sunday, The New York Times published an article claiming the New York Post reporter who wrote most of the article about Biden’s laptop “refused to put his name” on the story “because he had concerns over the article’s credibilit­y.”

Giuliani, a former New York mayor and current political operative for Trump, asserted that Joe Biden tried to protect Burisma when he pressured the Ukrainian president in 2015 into firing the country’s prosecutor general.

Last year, Trump sought informatio­n from Ukraine’s new president – an act that was at the center of Trump’s impeachmen­t.

U.S. Senate Republican­s published a report last month based on an investigat­ion into the claims. Though they found Hunter Biden’s business made State Department officials’ work awkward, they found no evidence that Joe Biden acted inappropri­ately.

Monday, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Lauren Witzke posted a claim on Twitter and Facebook that Giuliani visited a Delaware police station.

Tuesday, Giuliani said on formerTrum­p adviser Steve Bannon’s radio show that he had informatio­n of criminal activity relating to Hunter Biden.

Marshall said what Giuliani’s team “showed up with was evidence that they said was involved in a crime.”

He said Delaware authoritie­s are not investigat­ing and have never investigat­ed Hunter Biden.

 ?? KARL BAKER/USA TODAY NETWORK ?? John Paul Mac Isaac, owner of the Mac Shop in Wilmington, Del., says a man who identified himself as Hunter Biden brought damaged computer equipment to his small repair shop in April 2019.
KARL BAKER/USA TODAY NETWORK John Paul Mac Isaac, owner of the Mac Shop in Wilmington, Del., says a man who identified himself as Hunter Biden brought damaged computer equipment to his small repair shop in April 2019.

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