Hunter Biden's Attorney Sends Threatening Demand to Donald Trump
A Biden is going after former President Donald Trump — but it’s not the one you might expect.
No, this particular spat is between the 2024 GOP presidential candidate and President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter — or, at least, their respective legal teams.
On Thursday, Law360 reporter Frank G. Runyeon shared a cease and desist letter sent by Biden attorney Abbe David Lowell to Trump’s lawyers.
“Hunter Biden’s attorney demands Donald Trump cease & desist from statements ‘both defamatory and likely to incite’ violence against the U.S. president’s son,” Runyeon said in the accompanying tweet.
NEW: Hunter Biden’s attorney demands Donald Trump cease & desist from statements “both defamatory and likely to incite” violence against the U.S. president’s son.
Invoking the Paul Pelosi attack, he says “we are just one such social media message away from another incident.” pic.twitter.com/UiP7rK7ebV
— Frank G. Runyeon (@frankrunyeon) July 13, 2023
Lowell, who’s with the Winston & Strawn law firm, addressed various members of Trump’s legal team in the letter, which was dated Thursday.
“As you know, Winston & Strawn represents, and I am writing on behalf of our client, Hunter Biden,” the letter said.
“I am sending this letter to make a demand that your client, former President Donald Trump, cease and desist from making public statements about my client which are both defamatory and likely to incite Mr. Trump’s followers to take actions against Mr. Biden and which could lead to his or his family’s injury,” Lowell continued.
The attorney then specifically called out this post from the former president on his Truth Social platform about David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware handling Hunter Biden’s prosecution on tax and gun charges:
“Weiss is a COWARD, a smaller version of Bill Barr, who never had the courage to do what everyone knows should have been done. He gave out a traffic ticket instead of a death sentence,” Trump posted.
Last month, Biden agreed to a plea deal that will keep him out of prison, drawing the ire of many conservatives. Trump’s post described it as “TWO TIERS OF JUSTICE!”
Lowell, however, took particular issue with the “death sentence” statement.
“You may respond that this was a mere figure of speech,” he wrote. “However, we have seen that what might pass as such a phrase when uttered by rationale people is heard by too many in this country as some terrible injustice for which they must take physical and violent action.”
The letter then blamed any deaths connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion on Trump and his rhetoric.
Biden’s attorney said his demand was “not a false alarm” and proceeded to, bizarrely, invoke Paul Pelosi.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband captured national attention in October 2022 when he was attacked by a crazed vagrant. That attention exploded into curiosity as a strange bodycam video surfaced.
Lowell cited a report that said Pelosi’s assailant also had Hunter Biden’s name on his “hit list.”
“We are just one such social media message away from another [Pelosi-like] incident, and you should make clear to Mr. Trump — if you have not done so already — that Mr. Trump’s words have caused harm in the past and will and threaten to do so again if he does not stop,” he wrote.
Given what is already on Trump’s plate (37 federal criminal charges, 34 felony charges in New York and the looming GOP primaries) and his well-established brashness, it seems unlikely that the former president will give this cease and desist too much thought or consideration.
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