By Katabella Roberts
Contributing Writer
President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, has agreed to drop a lawsuit against former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and his ex-lawyer Robert Costello. The lawsuit accused them of “total annihilation” of his digital privacy and alleged they manipulated data allegedly taken from his laptop, court records show.
A stipulation of voluntary dismissal was filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The dismissal states that it has been agreed by and between all three parties and their respective legal teams that the lawsuit against Giuliani and Costello will be voluntarily dismissed without prejudice.
However, the dismissal must still be reviewed by U.S. District Judge Jessica Clarke, according to court records.
Lawyers for the younger Biden filed a lawsuit in September of last year, alleging that Giuliani — who served as President Donald Trump’s legal adviser in 2020 — and Costello violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by allegedly obtaining data from his laptop, which was dropped off at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019.
In court papers, Biden’s legal team accused the two men of allegedly “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, including what defendants claim to have obtained from plaintiff’s alleged ‘laptop’ computer.”
Hunter Biden’s lawyers further alleged that his digital data was “manipulated, altered, and damaged” before it was sent to Giuliani and Costello.
The lawsuit initially sought more than $75,000 in damages, as well as attorneys’ fees and other penalties.
Both Giuliani and Costello denied any wrongdoing.
A lawyer for Hunter Biden and representatives for Giuliani and Costello did not immediately respond to a request for comment.