Hunter Biden sued Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mr. Giuliani’s former lawyer on Tuesday for his or her roles in disseminating private details about Mr. Biden mentioned to have been taken from a Laptop Computer he left at a Delaware restore store earlier than the 2020 election.

The go well with is the newest transfer by Mr. Biden, the president’s son, to take a extra adversarial strategy with opponents who’ve used his troubles as the premise for political assaults on his father. Mr. Biden, who lengthy struggled with dependancy to crack cocaine and alcohol, was indicted by federal prosecutors this month on fees of mendacity about his drug use when he bought a handgun in 2018, and he faces a possible indictment on tax fees.

Earlier this yr, Mr. Biden sued the proprietor of the shop the place he left the Laptop computer, and final week he sued the Inside Income Service for the way in which it divulged his tax returns to Congress and a former Trump administration aide who has publicized details about him.

Within the go well with filed on Tuesday in federal court docket in Los Angeles, Mr. Biden claimed that Mr. Giuliani and his former lawyer, Robert J. Costello, “have been primarily answerable for what has been described because the ‘complete annihilation’” of Mr. Biden’s privateness.

“For the previous many months and even years, defendants have devoted a rare period of time and power towards on the lookout for, hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating and usually obsessing over knowledge that they got that was taken or stolen from plaintiff’s units or storage platforms,” together with what they declare to have taken from the laptop computer, the go well with says.

Among the many legal guidelines Mr. Biden says that Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Costello ought to be held accountable for violating are the Pc Fraud and Abuse Act and California’s Pc Information Entry and Fraud Act. The go well with didn’t identify a greenback determine that Mr. Biden is looking for, saying solely that it was over $75,000.

Ted Goodman, an adviser to Mr. Giuliani, responded in an announcement: “Hunter Biden has beforehand refused to confess possession of the laptop computer. I’m not shocked he’s now falsely claiming his laptop computer exhausting drive was manipulated by Mayor Giuliani, contemplating the sordid materials and potential proof of crimes on that factor.”

Mr. Giuliani started attempting to advertise the contents of the laptop computer within the weeks earlier than the November 2020 election, hoping to present Mr. Trump an October shock that would catapult him to victory over Joseph R. Biden Jr. The contents that Mr. Giuliani mentioned got here from the laptop computer included salacious photographs of Mr. Biden in addition to a trove of emails and textual content messages describing overseas enterprise contacts and household issues.

Because the contents of the laptop computer turned public, Mr. Biden’s aides tried to boost questions in regards to the validity of the fabric, and dozens of former intelligence officers launched a letter that solid data turning into public as having “all of the basic earmarks of a Russian data operation.”

Mr. Biden has by no means instantly acknowledged that the laptop computer from the restore store was his, and the go well with doesn’t instantly concede that it was. However some information organizations, together with The New York Instances, have authenticated a few of the messages from it, and the go well with seems to acknowledge that a minimum of a few of the data from the laptop computer was his, saying “a few of the knowledge that defendants obtained, copied, and proceeded to hack into and tamper with belongs to plaintiff.”

The go well with seems to stroll that line fastidiously, nonetheless. It comprises a footnote saying that Mr. Biden was not making an “admission” that the pc retailer proprietor “possessed any specific laptop computer containing electronically saved knowledge belonging to Mr. Biden.”

As an alternative, the footnote says, Mr. Biden “merely acknowledges that in some unspecified time in the future,” the shop proprietor “obtained electronically saved knowledge, a few of which belonged to Mr. Biden.”

The go well with provides to a heaping pile of authorized troubles for Mr. Giuliani. Final month, the Fulton County District Lawyer’s workplace indicted him in reference to attempting to reverse that state’s 2020 election consequence. Final week, Mr. Giuliani was sued by a lawyer looking for over 1,000,000 {dollars} in unpaid authorized charges.

The lawyer who sued Mr. Giuliani? Mr. Costello, his co-defendant within the go well with filed on Tuesday.