Rudy Giuliani has provided an additional copy of a hard drive allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden to Delaware authorities, a state official said Wednesday, and it’s now in the hands of the FBI.
The move from President Donald Trump’s lawyer comes as the president’s supporters seek to draw attention to an issue the Trump campaign believes is damaging to former Vice President Joe Biden.
Giuliani visited the New Castle County Police Department in Delaware on Monday and handed over a copy of what he says was Hunter Biden’s hard drive, according to a spokesperson for the Delaware Department of Justice.
Giuliani told New Castle police officials the hard drive contained evidence of crimes. New Castle police turned it over to the FBI after seeking guidance from the Delaware Department of Justice, said spokesperson Mat Marshall.
A spokesperson for the FBI field office which oversees Delaware declined to comment. A spokesperson for the New Castle County Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Delaware Department of Justice falls under the state’s attorney general and is not tied to the federal Justice Department.
Hunter Biden’s alleged hard drive has become a storyline in the final weeks of the presidential campaign after the New York Post published a series of articles last week based off of documents it said were taken from a hard drive allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden.
On Monday, NBC News sent a letter to Giuliani and his lawyer, Robert Costello, requesting a copy of the hard drive in order to be able to evaluate the content and authenticity of the emails and other records.
Later that night, Giuliani questioned the lack of attention large media outlets were paying to the Hunter Biden story. “Why is the Swamp Media covering it up so you, the American people, don’t get this information?” he said in a tweet.
Costello told NBC News on Tuesday the request was under consideration by Giuliani, but it was ultimately Giuliani’s decision to make.
Neither Costello nor Giuliani has followed up. Costello did not respond to inquiries Wednesday.
The first story published by the New York Post, a conservative tabloid, highlighted what it called a “smoking gun email” that suggested a meeting between Biden and a representative of a Ukrainian company that once paid Hunter Biden. The Biden campaign says there is no evidence the meeting happened, and the story was greeted with widespread skepticism.
"This is the same garbage [from] Rudy Giuliani, Trump's henchman," Biden told Wisconsin news outlet WISN in a recent interview. "It's the last-ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family.”
Questions have swirled around the Post’s account of how it obtained the emails and other materials. The newspaper said they were found on a laptop left in a Delaware repair shop in April 2019 and never claimed. The repair shop owner then took it upon himself to access the private material, the Post said.
The Post said the shop owner, who has been identified as John Paul Mac Isaac, called the FBI, and also called a Giuliani associate. The shop owner said he believed the laptop was among equipment left by Hunter Biden, according to the Post, because a sticker on the laptop bore the name of the Beau Biden Foundation, a charity named after his late brother.
Two sources familiar with the matter previously told NBC News federal investigators are examining whether the emails referenced in the Post article are linked to a foreign intelligence operation.