Rudy Giuliani has provided an additional copy of a hard drive alleged to have belonged to Hunter Biden to Delaware authorities, a state official said Wednesday, and it's now in the hands of the FBI.
The move by Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, comes as Trump's supporters seek to draw attention to an issue the Trump campaign believes is damaging to former Vice President Joe Biden.
Giuliani visited the New Castle County Police Department in Delaware on Monday and handed over a copy of what he said was Hunter Biden's hard drive, according to a spokesperson for the Delaware Justice Department.
Giuliani told police officials that the hard drive contained evidence of crimes. Police turned it over to the FBI after seeking guidance from the state Justice Department, spokesperson Mat Marshall said.
A spokesperson for the FBI field office that oversees Delaware declined to comment. A spokesperson for New Castle County police didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Delaware Justice Department falls under the authority of the state's attorney general and isn't tied to the federal Justice Department.
Hunter Biden's alleged hard drive has become a storyline in the final weeks of the presidential campaign after the New York Post published a series of articles last week based on documents it said were taken from a hard drive alleged to have belonged to Hunter Biden.
On Monday, NBC News sent a letter to Giuliani and his attorney, Robert Costello, requesting a copy of the hard drive to evaluate the content and authenticity of the emails and other records.
Later that night, Giuliani questioned the lack of attention large media outlets were paying to the story. "Why is the Swamp Media covering it up so you, the American people, don't get this information?" he said in a tweet.
Costello said Tuesday that the request was under consideration by Giuliani and that it was ultimately Giuliani's decision to make.
Neither Costello nor Giuliani has followed up. Costello didn't respond to inquiries Wednesday.
The first story published by the Post, a conservative tabloid, highlighted what it called a "smoking gun email" that suggested a meeting between Biden and a representative of a Ukrainian company that once paid Hunter Biden. The Biden campaign says there is no evidence that the meeting happened, and the story was greeted with widespread skepticism.
"This is the same garbage [from] Rudy Giuliani, Trump's henchman," Biden told WISN-TV of Milwaukee in a recent interview. "It's the last-ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family."
Questions have swirled around the Post's account of how it obtained the emails and other materials. The newspaper said they were found on a laptop computer left in a Delaware repair shop in April 2019 and never claimed. The repair shop owner then took it upon himself to access the private material, the Post said.
The Post said the shop owner, who has been identified as John Paul Mac Isaac, called the FBI and also called a Giuliani associate. The shop owner said he believed the laptop was among equipment left by Hunter Biden, according to the Post, because a sticker on the laptop bore the name of the Beau Biden Foundation, a charity named after his late brother.
Two sources familiar with the matter have previously told NBC News that federal investigators are examining whether the emails referred to in the Post article are linked to a foreign intelligence operation.
