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Shop owner who gave Biden laptop to FBI says NYT story 'a day late and a dollar short'

"I had to close my shop. As a safety precaution, I'd left town and I stayed with some relatives out in Colorado for a better part of a year," John Paul Mac Isaac said.

Published: March 17, 2022 5:57pm

Updated: March 17, 2022 10:27pm

John Paul Mac Isaac, the former owner of the Delaware computer repair shop where Hunter Biden left his laptop, says he laughed at the recent New York Times article admitting the legitimacy of the story that the media had suppressed during the 2020 election cycle.

On Wednesday, The New York Times admitted the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop following the media’s dismissal of it as Russian disinformation.

Mac Isaac told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Thursday that the day after the New York Post broke the story on the Hunter Biden laptop, reporters from CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times came to his computer repair shop. He said he explained his side of the story to them but figured "that they were probably never going to publish anything that I was saying."

"So trust me, when I woke up this morning, I kind of got a chuckle because I was like, 'Oh, a day late and a dollar short, aren't they?'"

Mac Isaac explained the difficulties he has faced since bringing Hunter's laptop to the FBI and later Rudy Giuliani which led to media attacks accusing of him being involved in Russian disinformation.

"I had to close my shop. As a safety precaution, I'd left town and I stayed with some relatives out in Colorado for a better part of a year," Mac Isaac said.

"Obviously, when Twitter took a turn for the worse, I had to come back to Delaware because if bankruptcy is something that I have to face, I don't want to lose my house in that process. So I'm back in Delaware, I really don't go out too much."

Mac Isaac sued Twitter for defamation after it censored the story on the Hunter Biden laptop, claiming the social media platform's "specific intent" was to "communicate to its users … that [Mac Isaac] is a hacker and/or hacked the published materials."

Six months later, a Florida judge dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice and ordered Mac Isaac to pay the company's legal bills, which amounted to about $175,000, according to the New York Post.

The former computer repair shop owner said he is visually impaired and worried about being physically attacked.

"So somebody wants to do me harm, I'm never gonna see it happen. And that's my fear. I'm not necessarily worried about a retaliation from a particular group of people or an agency," Mac Isaac said.

"They've been poking me with a stick with through unemployment — denial of unemployment — or even the IRS poking me with a stick for $57. I don't think anybody's gonna come after me. But I am worried about, especially with the heightened concern of Russia and Ukraine and the rekindling of the notion that I'm a stooge for Putin, that does have me a little worried."

Mac Isaac told the Post that he had filed for unemployment multiple times since December 2020 after not receiving any response.

In December of last year, he wrote Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., saying, "I would hate to think that I was singled out in a politically motivated attack. If a state agency was weaponized to punish a perceived political enemy, the country has a right to know."

Mac Isaac said he received his unemployment checks shortly thereafter, but still was shorted several thousand dollars.

He also told the Post he received an invoice in September 2021 for a 2016 tax return totaling $57.75. While he paid it promptly, he said, "I took it to an accountant friend of mine who said they don't go back that far unless they’re looking for something."

"We have all seen how weaponized the IRS has become over the last decade, so I wasn’t about to pick a fight," he added.

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