Dem
51
GOP
49
Remember all those breathless stories about Hunter Biden's laptop? For a while, it was the most famous computer in the land, even more famous than Hillary's e-mail server. If there were an Electronics Hall of Fame, both of them would be famous enough to qualify easily. Very briefly, as a refresher, Biden left his laptop at a repair shop and forgot to pick it up. The owner was a Republican who realized what he had in his hands and told Republican officials about the treasure he had, full of d**k pics and more. Eventually Rudy Giuliani got a hold of the hard disk and began bragging about his haul.
Now the jig is up. Biden has sued Giuliani for invasion of privacy, citing, among other things, both state and federal privacy laws that Giuliani broke by looking at personal data that he had no business looking at—and then bragging about it in public. Giuliani recently lost a lawsuit to two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, and has other lawsuits pending. He is also a defendant in the Georgia RICO case. And, by the way, he's broke and he still hasn't sold his apartment. It has been on the market for 61 days now and is still priced at $6.5 million. He may well have a mortgage on it, in which case his net could be far less than $6 million in the end. The amount he owes the two Georgia election workers is certain to be in the millions and his legal fees for the various trials will also be in the millions. In addition, his long-time lawyer is suing him for unpaid bills. Now this lawsuit from Biden, who has a strong case. Talking about chickens coming home to roost.
Giuliani's woes also show what kind of person Donald Trump is. Giuliani has been as faithful as a hound dog to Trump. Trump could give him a few million and pay the gift tax himself as a reward for years of support. But with Trump, loyalty is a one-way street. Trump's tightfistedness is also stupid beyond belief because while Giuliani can't get out of the civil suits, he could get out of the criminal prosecutions by flipping, thus saving half a million or more in lawyers' fees. He might be tempted. Trump could end that temptation by bailing him out, but nope.
Back to the laptop, in Feb. 2023, Giuliani's "America's Mayor Live" podcast had a segment in which Giuliani held up a laptop and said: "This belongs to Hunter Biden." In court he is going to have to explain what he was doing with it. He could say: "When Biden didn't pick it up after 90 days, the repair shop gave it to me" but what is he going to say when Biden's lawyer asks: "Since you knew who owned it, why didn't you just return it to him?" Under Delaware law, when property is abandoned, it must be turned over to the state, which then lists it on its website, so the rightful owner can then claim it. Giuliani had no business having it at any time.
To make things worse, in the podcast, Giuliani said he copied the data to his own computer. He certainly had no right to do that, and that is where the invasion of privacy case kicks in. Merely waving a closed laptop in the air is bad enough, but if he never turned it on, that might not be an invasion of privacy. However, copying the data to his own computer? That's looking for trouble and now he has found it. (V)