The laptop from hell: how it got out

John Paul Mac Isaac, who ran The Mac Shop in Wilmington, says Hunter Biden left a damaged MacBook Pro for data recovery in April 2019, signed a repair authorization and never came back; when calls went unanswered, Mac Isaac came to regard it as abandoned. He contacted the FBI in July 2019, as Giuliani’s Ukraine allegations were making news. On 9 December 2019 agents from the Wilmington field office served him a subpoena for the laptop, the hard drive and the paperwork. Before handing it over he made a copy, his lawyer said, “in case he was ever thrown under the bus.” [1][2]

After getting no answer from members of Congress, he emailed Giuliani’s lawyer Robert Costello on 26 August 2020 under the subject line “Why is it so difficult to be a whistleblower when you are on the right?” Giuliani passed the data to the New York Post, which published its first story on 14 October 2020. Other copies spread from there to Republican activists and reporters. [1][3][4][5]

Mac Isaac sued Hunter, Politico, CNN and others for defamation over claims that the laptop was Russian disinformation or stolen. Hunter countersued him for invading his privacy. On 25 August 2025 the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal of both sides’ claims on procedural and legal grounds, without deciding whose story was true. [1]

Hunter also sued Giuliani and his lawyer Robert Costello over the data and dropped the case in June 2024, leaving open the chance to refile. His suit against Garrett Ziegler, a former Trump White House aide who posted much of the data online, ended in a dismissal with prejudice, and in May 2025 the court denied Ziegler’s bid for legal fees. In February 2023 his lawyers asked federal and Delaware prosecutors to investigate those who spread his data; nobody was charged. [2][3][4][5]