The owner of a computer repair shop at the center of a series of October stories on emails retrieved from what was alleged to be Hunter Biden’s laptop has filed a $500 million defamation lawsuit against Twitter.
John Paul Mac Isaac, who owns the Mac Shop in Delaware, sued the social media giant for allegedly defaming him and his business through the platform’s censorship of a story by the New York Post on emails contained in the alleged Hunter Biden laptop. The laptop was dropped off at Isaac’s shop in April 2019 for repairs but never recovered. Isaac later turned the contents of the laptop over to the FBI and to an attorney working with Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer.
In October, Twitter locked the Post’s account and barred users from sharing an article that cited emails retrieved from the alleged Biden laptop. The social media giant said the story violated its rules against posting “hacked materials.”
“Defendant’s actions and statements had the specific intent to communicate to the world that Plaintiff is a hacker,” Isaac’s lawsuit, filed on Monday, says. “The term ‘hacker’ is widely viewed as disparaging, particularly when said about someone who owns a computer repair business.”
“Plaintiff is not a hacker and the information obtained from the computer does not [include] hacked materials because Plaintiff lawfully gained access to the computer, first with the permission of its owner, Biden, and then, after Biden failed to retrieve the hard drive despite Plaintiff’s requests, in accordance with the Mac Shop’s abandoned property policy,” the lawsuit continues. “Plaintiff, as a direct result of Defendant’s actions and statements is now widely considered a hacker and, on the same day Defendant categorized the Plaintiff as a hacker, Plaintiff began to receive negative reviews of his business as well as threats to his person and property.”
Twitter declined The Daily Wire’s request for comment.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that his company was “wrong” to censor the Post’s story on Hunter Biden. He said that after launching an internal review, the company took steps to correct their mistake after finding that the story did not actually violate its policies. While the story was able to be shared, the Post’s own Twitter account remained locked for over a week.
“We were called here today because of an enforcement decision we made against the New York Post based on a policy we created in 2018 to prevent Twitter from being used to spread hacked materials. This resulted in us blocking people from sharing a New York Post article publicly or privately,” Dorsey testified to Congress on Nov. 17. “We made a quick interpretation using no other evidence that the materials in the article were obtained through hacking, and according to our policy, we blocked them from being spread. Upon further consideration, we admitted this action was wrong and corrected it within 24 hours.”
In November, Isaac reportedly temporarily abandoned his closed shop and left the area after receiving alleged death threats. As The Daily Wire reported:
A sign posted on John Mac Isaac’s Trolley Square store ten days after the election said it was closed, a neighbor claiming that the owner had left town. Mac Isaac’s lawyer, Brian Della Rocca, confirmed to the Delaware News Journal that Mac Isaac had closed the shop, but did not say whether his client had left town. He did claim that his client had received death threats.
Della Rocca told the Journal that his office had communicated with Wilmington FBI agents and Delaware’s Assistant United States Attorney Leslie Wolf about the situation, saying, “I’ve been in touch with federal law enforcement, yes.”