A high-ranking government official who has been asked by Hunter Biden to launch an investigation in connection to his abandoned laptop has long-standing ties to President Joe Biden and his family, records show.
The younger Biden’s lawyers sent letters on Wednesday to several parties, including Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings and U.S. Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew G. Olsen, requesting them to investigate those who disseminated contents on the laptop. Jennings, in particular, is a Biden ally who could be forced to recuse herself from any cases involving Hunter Biden due to her Biden family connections, one watchdog group told the Washington Examiner.
HUNTER BIDEN’S DOJ LAPTOP INVESTIGATION DEMAND MAY POSE PROBLEM FOR PRESIDENT: WATCHDOGS
“Justice requires a disinterested prosecutor who will pursue the truth without bias,” Tom Jones, the president of the American Accountability Foundation, a conservative watchdog, told the Washington Examiner.
“Considering Kathy Jennings’s long history with the Biden family, including working for Beau Biden, coupled with the wrecking ball of betrayal, deceit, and disappointment, that Hunter has taken to that family, coupled with the Biden family’s near royal status in Delaware, it is hard to imagine any circumstance in which Kathy Jennings or the Delaware Attorney General’s office could approach this issue objectively,” said Jones.
Hunter Biden’s legal team is asking the Justice Department to see whether ex-Trump advisers Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon, among others, violated federal and Delaware laws in “accessing, copying, manipulating, and/or disseminating” Biden’s “personal computer data.” Letters were also sent to the IRS, Fox News, and Tucker Carlson.
This request also extended to John Paul Mac Issac, the ex-computer shop repair owner for the Delaware location where Biden left his laptop and hard drive in late 2019. Mac Issac tried to contact Biden for months about the laptop. He then contacted the FBI to pick it up and later provided a copy to Giuliani’s personal attorney, Robert Costello.
On Thursday, several watchdog groups said that Hunter Biden’s DOJ request could pose a glaring problem for Joe Biden and open him up to a “conflict of interest,” given it was issued to his father’s administration. But in addition, his demand to Jennings proves notable due to her connections to the Biden family.
Jennings, who has been Delaware’s chief legal officer since January 2019, endorsed the older Biden for president in a lengthy Facebook post detailing how she has “known Joe, Jill, and the Biden family for most of my life.” The post included an image of her with both Joe Biden and now-first lady Jill Biden.
“Joe is one of the kindest and most genuine people I’ve ever known,” she wrote. “I have seen him suffer incredible tragedy — the loss of his first wife, his daughter, and most recently his oldest son and my former boss, the late Attorney General Beau Biden — and I have seen him channel his grief into grace, empathy, and an unfailing talent for finding the good in everybody.”
“Democrats are blessed with many excellent candidates this year and I am proud of what those choices say about our Party,” Jennings added. “I’m choosing Joe because nobody understands more what it means to heal, and right now that’s what America needs.”
In staffing her ranks as attorney general, Jennings turned to a longtime Bidenworld staffer, Alexander Mackler. The chief deputy attorney general, who was appointed in January 2019 to focus on criminal justice reform, was deputy counsel to then-Vice President Joe Biden between 2014 and 2016.
Mackler was also the campaign manager for Beau Biden’s 2010 attorney general campaign and, between 2007 and 2008, was the press secretary for Joe Biden’s Senate office. He has exchanged emails over the years with Hunter Biden and his business partners, according to records on the laptop.
“Love you brother,” Mackler wrote to Hunter Biden in October 2018, laptop emails show.
Jennings, like Mackler, also worked closely with Beau Biden, who died of cancer in 2015. Jennings was a state prosecutor for the Delaware DOJ in 2011 during Biden’s tenure, where she “sought legislation to end mandatory life sentences for people convicted of drug crimes,” according to the Delaware attorney general’s office.
Jennings and Mackler have both visited the White House while Joe Biden has been in office as president, according to records reviewed by the Washington Examiner. Jennings headed to the South Lawn on Sept. 13, 2021, the same day that the president spoke to commemorate the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, a $740 billion climate and energy spending bill.
Mackler has made four visits to the White House, records show. He visited with Biden aide Steve Ricchetti in March 2022, White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs Director Julie Chavez Rodriguez in August 2022, and White House Senior Adviser for Congressional Engagement Claudia Marconi in September 2022.
Further, Mackler visited Biden at his personal residence in April 2022, records show.
“The fact that Hunter would ask Jennings serves only as further evidence of what a deeply troubled person he is,” said Jones. “The fact that his father continues to let him do this only underscores the President’s contempt for the law.”
Hunter Biden’s legal requests mark the first time he has, evidently, acknowledged that the abandoned laptop belongs to him. However, his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has claimed the letters “do not confirm Mac Isaac’s or others’ versions of a so-called laptop.”
“They address their conduct of seeking, manipulating and disseminating what they allege to be Mr. Biden’s personal data, wherever they claim to have gotten it,” he said.
The Washington Examiner commissioned a full forensic examination of the laptop in May 2022. The ex-Secret Service agent who conducted that review, Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos, found the files were indisputably authentic and that there was zero evidence of file or hacking manipulation.
Records on the abandoned laptop also indicate that Hunter Biden had close access to the garage in Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home, where classified documents from the older Biden’s vice presidency were found in December. There are images from 2017 on the laptop showing Hunter Biden behind the wheel of the president’s Corvette — which was parked in the garage.
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The White House did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment, nor did the Justice Department.
A lawyer for Hunter Biden did not respond.
