EXCLUSIVE — Records located on a copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop suggest he took personal data from his sister-in-law’s cellphones over a dozen times between 2017 and 2018 without her consent, according to a former Secret Service agent who has testified in over 100 classified, criminal, and civil matters at the state, federal, and international level as a cyberforensics expert.
The data Biden extracted from iPhones owned by Hallie Biden, the widow of his deceased brother, Beau Biden, included her text messages, photos, notes, call logs, calendar, and over 120 voicemails. Hallie Biden’s texts and voicemails that were located on Hunter Biden’s laptop were mostly personal in nature, but some indicate she was aware of his foreign business dealings in China.
Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos, a cyberforensics expert commissioned by the Washington Examiner to examine a copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which was abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019, said Hunter Biden may have violated federal law if he extracted Hallie Biden’s phone data and voicemails without her consent. Hunter Biden was not a party to most of the communications he obtained from Hallie Biden’s phones. Asked to comment on whether the Hallie Biden phone data on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop was obtained with her consent, Hunter Biden’s attorney declined to respond.
HUNTER BIDEN’S LAPTOP IS 100% AUTHENTIC, FORENSIC EXAMINATION CONCLUDES
“I confirmed with 100% certainty Hallie Biden’s iPhones were accessed and data from the devices was copied to the Laptop and stored in numerous folders and later accessed,” Dimitrelos said. “Without legal or authorized consent, the person accessing someone else’s computer device and performing the extraction of the data may be in violation of multiple Federal Statutes including 18 USC 1030 and 18 U.S. 2511 for unauthorized access of a computer system or interception of an electronic communication.”
Dimitrelos noted that he investigated alleged violations of federal computer fraud and abuse when he served in the Secret Service Electronic Crimes Special Agent Program from 1997 through 2005.
“Typically, the Justice Department treats the unauthorized access into other people’s computers and interception of their communications, hacking and bugging, as serious business,” former assistant U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy told the Washington Examiner.
“Bear in mind, from a national security perspective, that Hunter Biden himself is among the least significant aspect of the Biden investigation,” McCarthy added. “To the extent his computer files show potentially unlawful activity, and shady foreign business arrangements, they are grist for blackmail. The Hunter Biden laptop story is not principally about Hunter Biden. It is about the Biden family broadly and the question of whether American interests are vulnerable.”
ANDREW MCCARTHY: A MAJOR NEW DEVELOPMENT IN THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP SCANDAL
Hallie Biden is Hunter Biden’s sister-in-law, and they say they began a romantic relationship after her husband and his brother, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015.
Records on the hard drive show Hunter Biden purchased a program called Dr. Fone on May 6, 2017, which he subsequently used to extract the personal data from multiple iPhones owned by Hallie Biden beginning later that month. Dimitrelos said Hunter Biden had to have physically hard-wired Hallie Biden’s phones to his computer each of the more than a dozen times he used the program to extract her data.
Hallie Biden did not return requests for comment asking if she gave Hunter Biden permission to take the personal data from her smartphones.
Hunter Biden also used the Dr. Fone program to back up his iPhone, as well as at least two iPads that appear to have been used by him and his children.
There is no evidence on the drive suggesting Hunter Biden extracted data from any devices owned by his father, President Joe Biden.
Text messages between Hunter and Hallie Biden on the drive show the two were engaged in an extremely contentious romantic relationship before and during the time frame he extracted data from her cellphone. The messages show Hunter Biden often accused Hallie Biden of cheating on him with a man named David Walsh. Walsh did not return requests for comment.
“You are heartless and I will not be treated like second fiddle to not only beau but now fucking David,” Hunter texted Hallie Biden on April 28, 2017. “I think your affair with David started innocently enough. … The truth is sex is irrelevant David is irrelevant the only thing I cannot abide by is the lie and then the lie about the lie and on and on.”
Hunter Biden first extracted personal data from Hallie Biden’s iPhone on the evening of May 31, 2017, records from the drive show. The records obtained from that transfer include Hallie Biden’s text message history with Walsh from February and March 2016.
Days later, on June 4, 2017, Hallie Biden received a text from Hunter Biden in which he pasted her text message history with Walsh from February and March 2016.
“What the F*** are you doing,” Hallie Biden responded.
“I’m so angry at you!” she texted Hunter Biden the next day. “Call me when you get your f***ing s*** together. I’m not listening to your bulls*** excuses and insanity. You cause chaos all around you. F***ing grow up. This is ALL you. Enjoy your week.”
“Grow up a**hole,” Hallie Biden added. “You are creating a storm over nothing. And my point is, I let so much of your sit slide. You have to stop this. It is breaking us apart. Please don’t do this to us. Please.”
During the following months, Hallie Biden pleaded with Hunter Biden to stop bringing up Walsh.
On Oct. 22, 2017, Hallie texted Hunter Biden: “I love you. I am only saying to let the David s*** be behind us. Stop this and just be supportive of me please.”
The drive also contained multiple screenshots of the computer’s user actively reviewing Hallie Biden’s phone records. In one of the screenshots, a record was highlighted showing Hallie placed an outgoing phone call to Walsh on Jan. 8, 2017.
Dimitrelos previously told the Washington Examiner he was 100% certain Hunter Biden “was the only person responsible for the activity on this hard drive and all its stored data.” He added that the data on the drive is indisputably authentic and contains no evidence he could find of any file manipulation.
When asked about Dimitrelos’s findings upon reviewing the hard drive, Hunter Biden’s attorney, Christopher Clark, demanded the Washington Examiner provide him a copy of the drive’s contents and refused to comment.
“Why should I when you will provide me with nothing?” Clark previously told the Washington Examiner. “You can quote me in saying your laptop is a fraud and the fact your [sic] hiding it from verification simply proves that.”
Paul Kamenar, an attorney with the National Legal and Policy Center, an ethics watchdog group, said the digital records showing Hunter Biden took data from his sister-in-law’s iPhones could expose him to criminal and civil liability if he did so without her consent.
“Hunter Biden’s downloading of voicemails, text messages, and other data from Hallie’s cellphone, if done without her permission, could expose him to both criminal and civil liability under federal and state law,” Kamenar told the Washington Examiner. “This would not be surprising behavior from someone who shows little regard for tax laws, drug laws, and other legal requirements.”
Hallie Biden’s text messages and voicemails also indicate she was aware of the Biden family’s business dealings in China.
“He is at the hotel still dealing with the Chinese and meetings,” Hallie Biden texted one of Hunter Biden’s children on May 7, 2017, about five days after Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski said he met Hunter and Joe Biden in person to discuss a potential business deal with the now-defunct Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC.
Bobulinski released a separate trove of WhatsApp text messages in October 2020 that are not found on Hunter Biden’s laptop showing the pair discussing an upcoming meeting involving Joe, Jim, and Hunter Biden during the Milken Institute’s Global Conference at the Beverly Hilton on March 2, 2017. The texts indicate Bobulinski met with Joe Biden that evening, and he says they discussed the family’s business dealings.
WhatsApp texts from the Bobulinski trove indicate that James Biden also helped Bobulinski get credentials to the conference the next day. Bobulinski joined James Biden at the conference that day, and texts show they were to meet up again in New York shortly, before a trip to Miami to meet a Chinese businessman from CEFC a couple of days after that.
Messages from the Bobulinski trove also indicate that Hunter, Bobulinski, James Biden, and other business associates met with Chinese energy tycoon Ye Jianming that weekend in Miami. Ye was the chairman of CEFC.
Just over a week later, Hunter Biden’s business partner James Gilliar sent an email to Hunter Biden and Bobulinski detailing their provisional equity agreement in connection to the CEFC deal that stated: “10 held by H for the big guy ?”
The “big guy” in the email was a reference to Joe Biden, Bobulinski said in an October 2020 press conference. Joe Biden spokesman Andrew Bates later said the president “has never held stock in any such business arrangements nor has any family member or any other person ever held stock for him.”
Ye has since disappeared in China. Chinese state-run media named him in an alleged corruption case in 2018.
Records on Hunter Biden’s hard drive show Hallie Biden also received a voicemail from an unknown woman thanking her for intervening in a matter involving “Uncle Jack,” an apparent reference to Jack Owens, Joe Biden’s brother-in-law through his sister Valerie. Emails on the hard drive show Owens had reached out to Hunter Biden in 2014 for help securing a business license in the country. Hunter Biden replied at the time, “Working on it – back to you ASAP.”
“Uncle Jack is thrilled that you’re bailing him out tonight,” the woman said in the newly unearthed voicemail to Hallie Biden. “He asked me to call you to give you a little background on this guy, who is a real jerk. But we have to play nice with him until the money comes in from these accounts. … He’s into conspiracy theories. He’s got an ego, thinks everyone is out to get him. He’s very good at getting accounts, but he’s a very poor manager, he screams and yells at people, and there’s just a lot of contention. But he’s the CEO … we’ve got to keep this guy happy.”
The recording of the voicemail was copied to Hunter Biden’s computer when he pulled records from Hallie Biden’s phone on June 19, 2017, records on the laptop show. But it’s unclear when the woman left the voicemail on Hallie Biden’s phone or who she was referring to in the voicemail.
Joe Biden’s brother, Jim, also left multiple voicemails on Hallie Biden’s phone, including one that referenced Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
“Hey Hallie, it’s Uncle Jim. Give me a call when you can,” Jim Biden said in one of the voicemails, which Hunter Biden obtained when he pulled data from Hallie Biden’s iPhone on Oct. 28, 2017. “I haven’t heard from our boy in a day and a half or so … it’s unusual I haven’t heard from him. He shouldn’t be involved in all this business stuff going on right now anyway, but I just wanted to know if you’ve been talking with him.”
Emails, business records, and financial transactions show James Biden was deeply involved in Hunter Biden’s Chinese business dealings.
Also on the drive was a lengthy voicemail Hunter Biden left on Hallie Biden’s phone the morning of Nov. 3, 2017, berating her for being irresponsible and for blaming all of her personal problems on him.
Text messages pulled from Hallie’s phone also show her coordinating her family’s schedule with Secret Service agents assigned to her security detail in 2016.
HUNTER BIDEN CLAIMS NO MEMORY OF DROPPING OFF LAPTOP
Members of the Secret Service reportedly attempted to retrieve gun paperwork from a Wilmington, Delaware, gun store in October 2018 after a firearm owned by Hunter Biden went missing. According to a police document, Hallie took the .38-caliber revolver and placed it in a public trash can near Janssen’s Market in Wilmington. After his sister-in-law told him, Hunter Biden instructed her to go retrieve it, but it was no longer in the trash. Local police were notified, and the gun was soon recovered.
“The Secret Service did not provide protection to any member of the Biden family in 2018,” the Secret Service said in a 2021 letter. “Further, records searches concerning the reported involvement of Secret Service personnel in the alleged incident have yielded no results.”
Emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop also show he scheduled a meeting in 2014 with Karim Massimov, then the prime minister of Kazakhstan, to discuss an energy deal with Ukrainian gas giant Burisma. Hunter Biden told Ukrainian Burisma official Vadym Pozharskyi he planned to ditch his Secret Service security detail before departing from Paris to Kazakhstan to discuss the deal.
“Vadim — I’ve chosen to carry on from Paris without the Secret Service,” he wrote in a message dated May 26, 2014. “They are not happy about it, but it seemed far too complicated and unnecessary. Best, Hunter.”
Secret Service records don’t show whether the trip was made or not, and it is unclear if Hunter Biden went forward with it.
The Secret Service has also told Republican Senate investigators that it cannot find communications related to Hunter Biden’s travels for 2010, 2011, or 2013 — when Joe Biden was the vice president.
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Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson said earlier this year that “this raises questions, given that USSS travel records show that Hunter Biden made trips to China and other destinations around the world, including, Russia, Italy, Spain, and Mexico.”
James Murray, the director of the U.S. Secret Service, said the agency didn’t find any documents tied to the Republican requests in a letter in mid-February.
“In consultation with the Department of Homeland Security, on June 11, 2021, the Secret Service provided documents responsive to your request in accordance with law, longstanding Executive Branch practice, and Department-wide standards,” Murray wrote to the GOP. “In October 2020, the Secret Service worked extensively with your committees, and agreed to search parameters provided by your offices to identify communications regarding Mr. Biden’s travel. These search parameters did not yield communications for the years 2010, 2011, or 2013.”
