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(LifeSiteNews) – The Daily Beast issued an apology last week to John Paul Mac Isaac, the Delaware repairman who brought attention to Hunter Biden’s laptop. The apology comes in the wake of a million-dollar lawsuit filed by Mac Isaac against the Daily Beast for defamation.
The apology appears as an editor’s note as of Wednesday in a December 2020 article called “The Seeds of Hunter Biden’s Legal Woes Were Found on His Laptop.” The apology reads “An earlier version of this story mistakenly referred to Hunter Biden’s laptop as ‘stolen.’ We have removed that word, and we apologize to Mr. Mac Isaac for the error.”
Mac Isaac filed a lawsuit against the Daily Beast earlier this month for defamation caused by their coverage of the laptop. Also mentioned in the lawsuit are CNN, Politico, and House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA). It is not clear if the apology was inspired by the lawsuit.
Mac Isaac first acquired the laptop in April 2019 when Hunter Biden left his laptop at Mac Isaac’s shop looking to get it repaired. When Biden failed to pick up the laptop, Mac Isaac handed the laptop’s contents to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and to Rudy Giuliani, who was acting as then-President Donald Trump’s lawyer.
The laptop’s contents, which link the Bidens to shady business dealings with China and Ukraine, were dismissed by the media as disinformation following a report by the New York Post that emails found on the laptop linked the Bidens to Ukrainian energy firm Burisma. The story was also censored on social media in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, and Mac Isaac was accused of taking part in a “Russian disinformation campaign.”
Following social media’s censorship of the story, comments that Rep. Adam Schiff made to Wolf Blitzer on CNN, and negative coverage from other outlets, Mac Isaac began to receive hate mail and death threats, and his store was attacked with vegetables, eggs, and excrement. He was forced to close his business and had to spend a year in Colorado for his safety.
“After fighting to reveal the truth, all I want now is for the rest of the country to know that there was a collective and orchestrated effort by social and mainstream media to block a real story with real consequences for the nation,” Mac Isaac told the New York Post earlier this month.
“This was collusion led by 51 former pillars in the intelligence community and backed by words and actions of a politically motivated [Department of Justice] and FBI,” Mac Isaac continued. “I want … to reveal that collusion and more importantly, who gave the marching orders.”
Politico first gave credence to the story in September 2021, citing a book by Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger. The book, The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power, detailed the authenticity of the laptop’s contents as originally reported by the Post.
Last March, the New York Times reported that emails found on the laptop were authenticated by a federal investigation into Biden’s tax filings. According to the Times, emails found on the laptop were “authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.”
The Washington Post followed the Times report days later, claiming that two security experts had determined that emails taken from the laptop detailing Biden’s dealings with a Chinese energy firm were authentic.
Earlier this month, NBC reported that the laptop’s contents were authentic, following years of branding it as disinformation.
In spite of the evidence, the White House has said that President Joe Biden never got involved with his son’s business dealings. Polling from April shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that the president has likely been compromised by his family’s business dealings with China.
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