The Wilmington, Delaware, repair shop owner who distributed Hunter Biden’s laptop contents to the FBI and Trump supporters has emerged on a GoFundMe page to tell his story.
John Paul Mac Isaac has posted a series of videos — titled “The Truth” and “I am Not a Russian” and “I am Not a Hacker” — to dispel what Democrats and President Barack Obama’s intelligence kingpins said about him.
“To imply that I’m a hacker and that that information was hacked has had an irreversible impact on my business and my character,” Mr. Mac Isaac says in a video.
He says that at first, the FBI wanted nothing to do with the Biden laptop. Once the FBI took possession of it on Dec. 9, 2019, he got the feeling they were waiting for Hunter Biden to claim it.
“Why was it not admitted as evidence at impeachment?” he asks.
Mr. Mac Isaac said he faces death threats and his computer repair shop is kaput. He is raising money to pay legal expenses as he pursues a defamation lawsuit against Twitter. The social network branded the cache of Biden emails and other documents as hacked materials. Twitter blackballed an October New York Post story that first revealed the laptop’s copied hard drive.
A Florida judge threw out the Twitter complaint on jurisdictional grounds. Mr. Mac Isaac’s lawyer plans to refile in a new location.
As the laptop material splashed across conservative media, Mr. Obama’s intelligence czars entered the presidential election on behalf of then-Democratic nominee Joseph R. Biden. They released an open letter asserting that the Hunter Biden MacBook Pro contents had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe responded by saying there was no evidence to support the Russia claim. The FBI did not dispute Mr. Ratcliffe. No one mentioned in Hunter Biden’s email threads has repudiated their authenticity.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden has repeatedly asserted over the years that he does not discuss Hunter’s foreign business affairs with his son.
But the laptop’s storylines offer evidence that he does. For example, one 2015 email shows an executive of Ukraine’s Burisma Holdings thanking Hunter Biden for arranging a meeting with his father, then vice president, in Washington.
At the time, Hunter Biden, and his investment business partner, Devon Archer, won lucrative spots on the board of directors of Burisma, which the State Department considers corrupt. Hunter Biden also received millions of dollars from a Russian oligarch in 2014 and from a Chinese tycoon close to the Communist Party in 2017, a Republican Senate report shows.
Before Mr. Mac Isaac posted his videos, the major outlines of his story were known.
Hunter Biden came to his shop on April 13, 2019, and dropped off three computers for repairs. Mr. Mac Isaac was able to reboot one and retrieve hard drive contents as Mr. Biden requested. He telephoned Mr. Biden twice, left messages and sent a text message. But Hunter Biden never retrieved the computer.
Mr. Mac Isaac tells GoFundMe visitors that he hails from a patriotic military family. His dad and his grandfather were Air Force career pilots who served during the Cold War.
“That’s why it’s completely absurd that anyone would ever consider me to be a Russian agent or influenced by Russia,” he says. “I’m proud of my family. I’m proud of my country. And I’m proud to be an American.”
Mr. Mac Isaac discloses that he is legally blind from ocular albinism, an inherited condition that severely limits vision. He says he has “operational vision” of about 6 to 8 inches.
“Through the use of visual aids, and larger screens, I’ve been professionally repairing McIntosh computers for over a quarter of a century,” he says.
When Hunter Biden, who signed a repair agreement before he left the shop, failed to retrieve it, Mr. Mac Isaac decided the contents needed to be shared with the FBI.
“While recovering the data for Hunter Biden, John Paul came across information that may have relevance to ongoing investigations by federal law enforcement,” his website says. “As a patriotic American, he contacted the FBI.”
Democrats launched their impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump in September 2019. Mr. Mac Isaac said he thought the computer contents were relevant. Mr. Trump’s alleged offense was talking by phone with the Ukrainian president about investigating the Biden family’s activities in Ukraine.
Mr. Mac Isaac consulted with his dad. The family made an attempt to notify the field office in New Mexico, but the agent there was not interested.
Next, he contacted the Wilmington office, and in December — the month House Democrats voted to impeach Mr. Trump — the FBI handed him a grand jury subpoena and took possession of the contents. The FBI never notified House Republicans. Trump supporters might have been able to cite the contents as evidence that there needed to be a Biden inquiry as Mr. Trump said on the phone call.
“I was ecstatic,” Mr. Mac Isaac says. “I was getting everything that I wanted. I was getting protection from the FBI. I felt safe. I was finally getting this abandoned laptop and questionable data out of my shop. And if there was evidence there it was finally in the hands of proper authorities.”
But Mr. Mac Isaac’s confidence was shaken when the FBI called and asked him how to exploit the hard drive. Why didn’t the FBI send such a politically explosive computer to their renowned cybersecurity lab instead of leaving it in the hands of case agents? he wondered.
“I thought that it was odd that they required my help,” he says. “I was getting the feeling the FBI agenda no longer included my safety. … I did probably the smartest thing I ever did in my entire life and that was make a copy of the drive. I knew I had to get my story told.”
In May 2020, a family member posted a note on a White House contact page. The note said he had access to national security and criminal information and asked for a referral to the Justice Department. There was no reply. The family member also contacted an investigative reporter and a Senator but received no response.
“I was running out of time and running out of options and I had one last hope,” Mr. Mac Isaac says.
He contacted Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, and provided a hard drive copy. The Giuliani-controlled material made its way to the New York Post and then other news media, including The Washington Times.
Not known at the time was the fact that the FBI and Delaware U.S. attorney’s office had opened a tax fraud investigation into Hunter Biden in 2018. He himself disclosed the probe after the Nov. 3 voting.
Mr. Mac Isaac has raised $62,558 toward his GoFundMe goal of $100,000.
• Rowan Scarborough can be reached at rscarborough@washingtontimes.com.
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