Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani sued President Joe Biden for defamation on Wednesday, taking aim at two comments from 2020 that branded Giuliani a "Russian pawn."
Filed in New Hampshire state court, the 16-page lawsuit names Biden, his campaign, and four fundraising committees as defendants. According to the complaint, Biden made the statements on Oct. 22, 2020, during the final presidential debate against former President Donald Trump.
Biden initially linked Giuliani to Russia while answering a question about foreign election interference, the lawsuit claims.
"Well, I won't get — I shouldn't — well, I will," Biden said. "His buddy, Rudy Giuliani, he is being used as a Russian pawn. He is being fed information that is Russian, that is not true."
The complaint alleges that Biden knew his remarks would marginalize and discredit Giuliani and states that they falsely depicted him "to our nation as a liar."
After Trump brought up the "laptop from hell," referring to the story that broke days earlier about Hunter Biden's notorious laptop, Biden told the debate moderator he needed to respond to the reference to his son.
"Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this, he is accusing me of is a Russian plant," Biden said at the time. "They have said that this is has all the charact ... four, five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he is saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except the his and his good friend Rudy Giuliani."
Abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop, Hunter Biden's laptop reportedly contains a trove of damning information about his foreign business dealings that could be traced back to his father during his time as vice president.
Giuliani was involved in publicizing the contents of the computer in the run-up to the 2020 election.
Biden's second mention of Giuliani at the debate referred to a letter signed by 51 former national intelligence officials that warned the laptop story had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.
"Defendant Biden knew that the preceding statement about the laptop and asserting that the Plaintiff lied about the content of the laptop were untrue and Defendant Biden knew it to be untrue," the lawsuit states.
The letter has since been debunked as a partisan operation designed to discredit New York Post reporting about the laptop.
Last month, Hunter Biden filed a lawsuit against Giuliani claiming he and another defendant caused "total annihilation" of the younger Biden's digital privacy by disseminating the contents of the laptop.
President Biden and his political organizations are being sued for two counts of defamation, one count of libel, and one count of false light invasion of privacy. Giuliani is seeking unspecified financial damages and public acknowledgment by Biden that his statements were untrue.
Nicole Wells ✉
Nicole Wells, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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