Hunter Biden files lawsuit against former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler

Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Hunter Biden, the embattled son of President Joe Biden facing tax and potential gun-related charges, has filed a lawsuit against Garrett Ziegler, an aide to former President Donald Trump.

"Garrett Ziegler is a zealot who has waged a sustained, unhinged and obsessed campaign against [Hunter Biden] and the entire Biden family for more than two years," Biden, 53, alleged in a lawsuit filed in a federal court in California and obtained by UPI.

"While Defendant Ziegler is entitled to his extremist and counterfactual opinions, he has no right to engage in illegal activities to advance his right-wing agenda."

Ziegler allegedly had a role in publishing a trove of emails and private images of Biden taken from the infamous laptop alleged to have been abandoned by the president's son at a computer repair shop.

Biden accused Ziegler of improperly "accessing, tampering with, manipulating, altering, copying and damaging computer data that they do not own" in violation of the state's computer fraud laws.

The president's son is seeking a jury trial and an injunction to prevent Ziegler from continuing to access the data.

Biden previously demanded that Ziegler and 10 unnamed codefendants in the case cease and desist their activities but they "doubled down" and "vowed to continue violating the law."

Ziegler worked in the White House from February 2019 to January 2021 as a policy analyst and later as an associate director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy under the supervision of Trump ally Peter Navarro.

Biden previously referred Ziegler to federal and state prosecutors for alleged criminal behavior, ABC News reported.

Navarro himself has been convicted of contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with subpoenas from the House committee that investigated the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In March, Biden's legal team filed a lawsuit against John Paul Mac Isaac, the computer repairman in Delaware who claimed he obtained the laptop and distributed data from it.