The Hunter Biden laptop story is, I have been reliably told, Russian disinformation designed to influence the 2020 election.

That’s why I didn’t believe a word of it, and why I knew all those disgusting pictures were photoshopped.

That’s why I was so surprised to see that Mr. Biden is suing the laptop repair shop owner–whose business was bankrupted by the attacks on him for being a Russian asset–for violating his privacy.

Hunter Biden has filed a sweeping countersuit against the computer repair shop owner who said that Biden dropped his laptop off and never claimed it, a legal action that escalates the battle over how provocative data and images of the president’s son were obtained nearly five years ago.

In the counterclaim, filed on Friday morning in U.S. District Court in Delaware, Biden and his attorneys say that John Paul Mac Isaac had no legal right to copy and distribute private information. They accuse him and others of six counts of invasion of privacy, including conspiracy to obtain and distribute the data.

The 42-page filing goes into significant detail on the ways Hunter Biden’s data became public, a development that propelled it into the maelstrom of the last presidential campaign and, since January, to the center of a Republican-led congressional investigation of the president’s son.

Wouldn’t that mean he admits that the laptop was his?

There has been a mountain of evidence proving all the materials used by the NY Post to report on Joe Biden were authentic. Now Hunter Biden admits it and that it came from this store.

**Not one outlet** that spread the pre-election "Russian disinformation" lie has retracted it. pic.twitter.com/PowgvarFpp

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 17, 2023

I’m really confused. I took Joe’s “word as a Biden” that Hunter was the smartest man he knows and that Hunter was being smeared.

All those former intel agency types assured me that it was all lies. Facebook and Twitter were so convinced that they censored the story and kicked the oldest newspaper in America off their sites. It wasn’t true! If it were, Joe Biden would have lost the presidency.

It’s almost as if MSM ran a disinformation campaign that would make the Russians green with envy.

The first tweet's reference to "all corporate media outlets" is imprecise. Not *all* corporate outlets spread it: the NYT had skepticism and Fox debunked it.

*Most* of the corporate outlets ratified and spread it, and never retracted it: CNN, NBC News, ABC, Politico, etc.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 17, 2023

The basis of the lawsuit is hilarious. The Washington Post’s reporter, Matt Viser, somehow failed to convey the humor of it, but any reasonable person will love it:

The lawsuit could draw further attention to a sordid chapter in Hunter Biden’s life, one involving nude photos, sensitive audio and a trove of personal texts and emails. The countersuit is in part an attempt by Hunter Biden and his lawyers to reframe the story, focusing it on a private citizen whose privacy was allegedly invaded rather than a man who critics say traded on his father’s name and benefited from his political connections.

“As a result of Mac Isaac’s unlawful agreement and his conspiracy with others, Mr. Biden’s personal data was made available to third parties and then ultimately to the public at large, which is highly offensive, causing harm to Mr. Biden and his reputation,” the suit states. “The object of invading Mr. Biden’s privacy and disseminating his data was not for any legitimate purpose but to cause harm and embarrassment to Mr. Biden.”

How could there be a legitimate reason to release information that basically proves that the son of the former Vice President and then-candidate for president sold access to his dad, peddled influence, and funneled money to the Vice President in exchange for political favors?

I have to assume that all those newspapers and TV networks agreed that there is no public interest at issue, at least when it concerns a Democrat.

I love how the Washington Post describes the interest in the laptop’s contents, which pretty much shows that slow Joe was on the take. It is classic “Republicans pounce:”

It marks the first legal filing from Hunter Biden and his attorneys since his laptop emerged as a point of intense interest for the president’s political adversaries, and it reflects a newly aggressive approach by a legal team that Hunter Biden put in place in recent months. That team had previously sent criminal referrals and cease-and-desist missives to various people, but this is the first time the attorneys have formally gone into court.

They of course have a point. The media has zero interest in covering the story, and in a piece that goes into great detail about Hunter’s complaints that his privacy was violated the Post carefully avoids saying exactly how that is and why it is at issue. As usual, the story is about the bad Republicans and the mean laptop repair store owner. Why are they so nasty to a president’s child? I thought children not named Trump were off-limits.

Wait you believe the computer repair shop story? Like at face value?

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) October 17, 2020

Trump’s opponents denied the veracity of the laptop because Trump, and that is how narratives are formed and enforced. Hunter had never denied the laptop was his, and has repeatedly if implicitly conceded that it is his.

He is still doing this in his lawsuit, and too many are still playing along. In the lawsuit, Hunter still distances himself from the laptop, yet complains that revealing its contents violates his privacy. Trust the media not to laugh at the laughable, though, but rather present this as a legitimate attack on the store owner.

Hunter Biden does not concede in his lawsuit that he dropped off the laptop, received an invoice or neglected to pick it up. In response to such claims by Mac Isaac, the filing states, “Mr. Biden is without knowledge sufficient to admit or deny the allegations.”

But he does acknowledge that some of the data that has been released publicly belongs to him, and concedes that Mac Isaac could have obtained it in April 2019.

“This is not an admission by Mr. Biden that Mac Isaac (or others) in fact possessed any particular laptop containing electronically stored data belonging to Mr. Biden,” the filing says. “Rather, Mr. Biden simply acknowledges that at some point, Mac Isaac obtained electronically stored data, some of which belonged to Mr. Biden.”

Uh-huh.

For years the Post and every other newspaper would routinely, in supposedly “straight” news stories, call President Trump a liar.

Not here. Not now. Because he’s a Biden.

They have Hunter’s word as a Biden that he is a victim. That’s good enough.