By Erik Larson Bloomberg News/TNS
Share this story

(TNS) — Hunter Biden sued Rudy Giuliani for allegedly participating in the “total annihilation” of his digital privacy by hacking and manipulating data from his purported laptop, as he steps up a litigation effort in the wake of his indictment.

Giuliani and lawyer Robert Costello, who is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, illegally accessed a copy of a hard drive that President Joe Biden’s son allegedly left at a Delaware repair shop and tampered with the data for financial gain, according to the suit filed Tuesday in federal court in Los Angeles.

“For the past many months and even years, Defendants have dedicated an extraordinary amount of time and energy toward looking for, hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating, and generally obsessing over data that they were given that was taken or stolen from Plaintiff’s devices or storage platforms,” according to the lawsuit.

The suit comes as Hunter Biden is fighting federal gun charges and awaiting possible tax charges after a plea deal fell apart, casting a cloud over his father’s bid for re-election. Hunter Biden has fought back in court, suing the U.S. Internal Revenue Service over the disclosure of his tax information by two employees. Earlier this year he sued the repair shop owner.

In Tuesday’s suit, he claims Costello violated California law by using Hunter Biden’s user name to access an external hard drive he obtained from the repair shop owner, who said it contained “hundreds of gigabytes of Plaintiff’s personal data.”