Hunter Biden asks for Trump allies to be investigated, sends cease-and-desist to Fox News

A revamped legal team representing Hunter Biden is taking the first steps in what appears to be a more aggressive approach to his defense, disseminating on Wednesday a batch of criminal referrals and cease-and-desist letters targeting some of his most vocal detractors.

Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, wrote to the Justice Department and the Delaware attorney general's office asking investigators to examine the conduct of several operatives who allegedly played a role in "accessing, copying, manipulating, and/or disseminating Mr. Biden's personal computer data," including Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, and other supporters of former President Donald Trump.

"The actions described above more than merit a full investigation and, depending on the resulting facts, may merit prosecution under various statutes," Lowell said. "It is not a common thing for a private person and his counsel to seek someone else being investigated, but the actions and motives here require it."

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Law enforcement agencies are not obligated to act on such referrals, nor are they required to acknowledge them.

Lowell also wrote to the Internal Revenue Service requesting a probe into Garrett Ziegler, a former Trump White House aide who recently published a trove of emails allegedly tied to Hunter Biden. That letter challenges the tax-exempt status of Ziegler's organization, Marco Polo, which is filed as a 501(c)(3).

Ziegler's organization "has failed to operate solely for charitable purposes," Lowell wrote to the agency. "To the contrary, [Marco Polo] has operated as little more than a thinly disguised political operation to attack the Biden administration and the Biden family."

Bryan Sullivan, a defamation lawyer retained by Hunter Biden, also sent a cease-and-desist letter to Fox News and Tucker Carlson, asking the network and its primetime host to retract and correct a report they ran about alleged rent payments Hunter Biden made to his father, which they have claimed as evidence that the president was more closely tied to his son's financial arrangements.