by WorldTribune Staff, November 1, 2020
The father of the owner of the Delaware computer repair shop who came into possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop said he attempted to turn the laptop into the FBI during the summer of 2019 but was turned away.
The FBI did not return for the laptop until months later during impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, the shop owner’s lawyer told investigative reporter John Solomon.
Brian Della Rocca, the attorney for shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac, provided a detailed timeline to Just The News.
• A man claiming to be Hunter Biden dropped off three laptops on April 12, 2019 to Mac Isaac’s shop to be repaired, and returned two days later with an external hard drive. The man believed to be Hunter Biden eventually abandoned one of the laptops and the external hard drive without paying for them.
• Mac Isaac’s father, a retired Air Force colonel, first tried to provide a copy of the laptop to an FBI office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in summer 2019, but the bureau turned him away.
• FBI agents from Albuquerque contacted the father in October 2019, as impeachment proceedings were ongoing in Washington, to discuss the laptop and then to interview the younger Mac Isaac in Delaware. A few weeks later, FBI agents in Delaware seized the original laptop from Mac Isaac.
• On Oct. 13 of this year, Hunter Biden’s attorney contacted Mac Isaac to discuss the hard drive and followed up with an email but no further action.
Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski also turned over documents and other materials during an FBI interview.
Della Rocca also slammed major media and politicians who are questioning Mac Isaac’s motives, including the false assertion that he is somehow engaged in a Russian disinformation campaign.
Following is Della Rocca’s statement in full:
I represent John Paul Mac Isaac, the Mac repair shop owner in Wilmington, Delaware who
unwittingly became the target of a smear campaign by doing what he thought was right. John
Paul is not a right-wing fanatic nor is he a Russian hacker.
By way of background, John Paul has owned his shop for over ten years now. Prior to that, John
Paul was the “Lead Genius” at the Apple Store in Littleton, Colorado and New Castle,
Delaware. Once, while employed by Apple, he found himself in a situation where, while fixing a
customer’s iMac, he came across seemingly illegal material. He followed protocol and contacted
the authorities. No one questioned John Paul’s ethics then.
Fast-forward to April 12, 2019 when a man claiming to be Hunter Biden walked into his shop.
While John Paul was pleased that someone of Hunter Biden’s notoriety was in his shop, he did
not question why Hunter Biden was there. In fact, Hunter Biden had been referred to John
Paul’s shop. John Paul is well respected in the community and it would not have been
uncommon for his patrons to refer others to his shop. John Paul provided a solution for one of
Hunter Biden’s three laptops on the spot. Another laptop was a complete write-off but the third
laptop required more significant intervention. That laptop remained in the shop with John
Paul. Hunter Biden returned two days later with an external hard drive to which John Paul
would transfer the information.
According to John Paul, recovering the data was difficult because of the significant liquid
damage to the drive. He would boot the computer and transfer as much as he could before the
computer shut down. Then, he would boot up the computer again, verify what was copied, and
then transfer more data until the computer shut down again. This process repeated several
times. During this process, John Paul saw certain pieces of information but, at the time, he did
not think anything of it. Instead, John Paul completed the work and contacted Hunter Biden to let
him know. Hunter Biden never responded. As requested by Hunter Biden, a secure payment
request was sent in an email but was never paid. John Paul contacted him at least one more time
but Hunter Biden never responded. The policy of the shop is that items not picked up within 90
days of the completion of the services will be treated as abandoned property.
Around mid-July of 2019, news of Hunter Biden’s business dealings with the Ukraine were
coming more into focus and John Paul started to get uncomfortable with the information he had
seen. He was unsure if the hard drive contained information pertinent to the legal investigation.
At that point, he reached out to his father, a retired Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, for advice
about what he should do. They both decided that going to the FBI and handing over the Mac and
the drive was their best course of action. Soon thereafter, John Paul’s father took a copy of the
hard drive to an FBI field office in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The FBI turned John Paul’s
father away.
Then, in mid-October of 2019, an FBI Agent reached out to Colonel Mac Isaac and wanted to
discuss the Mac and drive. At that point, Colonel Mac Isaac passed along John Paul’s contact
information. The FBI then reached out to John Paul and met him at his house to discuss John
Paul’s concerns. On December 9, 2019, the FBI served a Subpoena on John Paul for the
computer, the hard drive, and all related paperwork. He willingly gave it to the FBI and was
happy to see it go.
Out of an abundance of caution, John Paul made a copy of the drive in case he was ever thrown
under the bus as a result of what he knew. As John Paul watched the impeachment trial, he
wondered why there was no reference to the information he had provided to the FBI. As a result,
starting in February of 2020 and until July of 2020, John Paul reached out to several members of
Congress to notify them of what he had in his possession. His requests fell on deaf ears.
Out of frustration, in the beginning of September, John Paul reached out to someone he thought
would be able to provide the information directly to the President. That person was Rudy
Giuliani. A day after John Paul reached out to Giuliani’s office, Robert Costello,
Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, contacted John Paul to discuss the information and John Paul’s concerns.
On September 24, 2020, John Paul then submitted information about the drive to Senator Ron
Johnson through the whistleblower link on Senator Johnson’s website. After that submission and
while Giuliani’s office was still trying to verify the information, Senator Johnson released
the senate report on the Biden business dealings. As we all know, prior to the New York Post’s
exposé, rumors began to circulate about the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Those rumors
did not start with John Paul. We believe, due to the timing of the rumors, that the information
may have been leaked by Senator Johnson’s office. Then, when Rudy Giuliani released the
information to the New York Post, that is when John Paul’s life as a respected part of the
Wilmington, Delaware community changed.
Now that the timeline has been established, what do we know?
1. We know it is Hunter Biden’s laptop because we have his signature on the Repair
Authorization and Hunter Biden’s attorney has reached out to John Paul about the
computer.
2. Hunter Biden never returned to retrieve the information rendering it abandoned property
or, in other words, junk. We know that once you throw something into the trash, you
relinquish your privacy rights to it, which is why so many investigations include a search
of a person’s trash.
3. The FBI confiscated the computer and the external hard drive and left John Paul with a
receipt.
4. The information on the drive was leaked by someone prior to the New York Post exposé.
John Paul has not released any information as he is cooperating with law enforcement
and to do so could hurt the investigation.
What do we not know?
1. We do not know if all emails released by the New York Post were actually on the hard
drive.
2. We do not know if the initial leak was from Senator Johnson’s office, from Rudy Giuliani
himself, or from somewhere else.
On October 26, 2020, in an opinion piece on CNN, Senator Chris Murphy discussed what he
described as the “facts” that Americans need to know about Russia’s interference in the U.S.
election. In the piece, Senator Murphy outlines how, as part of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, he is intimately aware of the interference methods being used by Russia. One of
those methods includes “hiring unknowing Americans” to do Russia’s bidding. He concludes his
piece by surmising that the “strange tale of a purported Biden family laptop’s data ending up in
the hands of Rudy Giuliani is a likely sign that Russia’s campaign to plant fictional, anti-Biden
propaganda into the US political debate may just be ramping up.” Then, in an effort to support
his assumption, he cites a recent letter from fifty (50) former intelligence officials who argued
that the laptop story had “all the hallmarks of a Russian operation.”
Senator Murphy failed to share facts with the American public. First, the letter from the former
intelligence officials is their opinion based on their experience. They do not have access to the
information to be able to know, for a fact, that the information is not part of a Russian
operation. Senator Murphy, on the other hand, works with Senator Johnson on the Foreign
Relations Committee and has the ability to obtain the information in question. Perhaps he should
have done so before writing an opinion piece and labeling it as “fact.”
Congressman Adam Schiff, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, also publicly
insinuated that the laptop story is related to an alleged smear campaign against Vice President
Biden that originated as part of a Russian disinformation plot. Specifically, Congressman Schiff
told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that, “clearly the origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin,”
and “this particular smear, though, has also been acknowledged to come from the Kremlin.”
Congressman, let’s be very clear, the laptop exists and it contains materials relating to Hunter
Biden and Burisma. I cannot confirm that the full extent of what was released by Rudy Giuliani
is, in fact, on the laptop but you, as the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have the
authority to find that out. As a reminder, the laptop is with the FBI.
On the other side of the aisle, Senator Johnson, Rudy Giuliani, and countless other Republicans
have used the laptop provided to them as part of a political campaign. That was not John Paul’s
intent. He was trying to get the information to law enforcement and, in doing so, became a
victim of politics. Although he is receiving support from many Americans, he is also the subject
of death threats and will likely be out of business as a result of this whole affair. This take no
prisoners approach to politics is where the problem lies – on both sides of the political aisle. The
rest of us can easily get caught up in the information being presented as if it is fact when, in
reality, much of what we hear or read is not.
The news media is not much better. Instead of reporting on the matter, news outlets are making
the decision themselves as to the veracity of the claims about Hunter Biden’s laptop. If you are
an avid follower of CNN or Politico, you have already been led to believe that John Paul is a part
of an overall Russian disinformation campaign.
Twitter and Facebook have taken it upon themselves to relegate this story to a level equal to that
of conspiracy theories. The actions by these social media platforms further hurt John Paul’s
reputation by advancing the notion that he is a part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
The problem is not that John Paul turned over the information to those he believed he could trust,
it is that politics today seems to revel in sensation and ignores the collateral damage left in its
wake. Not only are our elected officials seemingly happy to obfuscate the facts in order to attack
their opponents, they are also perfectly willing to throw everyday Americans under the bus for
their own political gain.
I, myself, am purposely not affiliated with any political party. I do not know what John Paul’s
party affiliation is nor does it matter to me. John Paul is an American, like the rest of us. I
honestly do not know what I would have done in a similar situation. I do know that John Paul did
what he believed was right. He has not profited in any way off this situation. The reality is quite
the opposite. John Paul will likely have to start a new career at the age of 44.
John Paul is not the problem, politics, biased reporting, and social media are.
Intelligence Brief __________ Replace The Media