Hunter Biden's laptop could be used as evidence in federal gun charges trial: What to know
Prosecutors in Hunter Biden's federal gun trial plan to introduce materials from his infamous laptop.
President Joe Biden's son is on trial for three felony gun charges over whether he lied about being addicted to drugs when he bought a gun in 2018.
Biden's laptop and its contents have been a point of controversy since October 2020, weeks before the contested election, when Donald Trump's former lawyer Rudy Giuliani turned it over to police and the New York Post.
The laptop eventually led to aggressive House investigations into President Joe Biden. But its more salacious contents, including explicit photos and videos of Hunter Biden, have continuously stoked the fire of controversy.
Its reemergence in court echoes the sordid tales that came out of former Trump's hush money trial, where porn star Stormy Daniels testified on her alleged sexual encounter with Trump a decade before the 2016 election. Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the hush money payment Daniels' received to keep that story out of the public conversation.
Here is what to know about Biden's laptop:
Hunter Biden trial live updates: A gun, drugs and emotional testimony
Laptop left at repair shop in 2019, never to be picked up
John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of The Mac Shop in Wilmington, Delaware, said a man identifying himself as Hunter Biden brought in three liquid-damaged laptops in April 2019.
One laptop was left behind, and Mac Isaac said at the time he shared the device with Robert Costello, Rudy Giuliani's lawyer who also testified at Trump's hush money trial, because he believed it would make him safer.
Giuliani, who had been looking for information to damage Biden's presidential campaign, shared the contents of the laptop with the New York Post and local police.
Laptop contents stoked Ukraine interference conspiracy
The laptop materials were used as fodder in a conspiracy Giuliani had been pushing for months. At the center of the story, largely debunked, was that Joe Biden intervened in Ukraine while sitting as vice president to help Hunter Biden, who was a board member on Ukrainian energy company Bursima.
The conspiracy alleged Joe Biden tried to help oust a Ukrainian prosecutor to thwart an investigation into Burisma.
The laptop dump yielded an email purportedly showing a Burisma adviser thanking Hunter Biden for setting up a meeting with Joe Biden while he was vice president during the Obama administration.
Information from the laptop also contributed to impeachment inquiries of President Biden, but committees have not yet found wrongdoing. The White House has dismissed investigations as a partisan effort against the President.
More: House Republicans issue new report on Joe Biden corruption… that again offers no evidence
Intimate images released from Hunter Biden's laptop
The laptop breach also revealed photos of Biden using drugs, naked and engaged in intimate relations with other adults.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. R-Ga., displayed sexually explicit photos of Biden in a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing in July 2023.
Laptop the center of several ongoing lawsuits
In the years since the laptop's contents was published, Huntr Biden has sued several people involved.
Biden lawyer Abbe Lowell filed an ethics complaint against Greene days after the hearing, calling her actions, "a new level of abhorrent behavior.”
In September 2023, Biden sued Giuliani and Costello for allegedly copying, manipulating and distributing the records in a "total annihilation" of his privacy.
Biden and the computer repair man Mac Isaac are also amidst dueling lawsuits.
Biden claims that Mac Isaac invaded his privacy. Mac Isaac claims Biden, as well as media outlets CNN and Politico, conspired to defame him by implying the leaked laptop material was a Russian effort to meddle in the 2020 election.
In February, both sides argued to a judge that their legal claims should prevail without trial. That ruling remains pending.
Contributing: Bart Jansen
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hunter Biden's laptop containing images, emails to be used as evidence
