A judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed against Twitter by the owner of the Delaware computer repair shop that had Hunter Biden’s laptop the same day it was filed.
The lawsuit, which was filed Monday by John Paul Mac Isaac in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, alleged that Twitter defamed Isaac when they censored a story from the New York Post under their hacked materials policy. The New York Post published emails from the laptop’s hard drive which showed President-elect Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, met with an executive from the Ukrainian gas company Burisma in 2015. (RELATED: Here’s What We’ve Found Digging Through Hunter Biden’s Alleged Laptop)
Hunter Biden Laptop Repairman’s Lawsuit Against Twitter Dismissedhttps://t.co/nFJDMr6rkY
— Sara A. Carter (@SaraCarterDC) December 29, 2020
Isaac argued that although he was not the person who gave the hard drive to the New York Post directly, the source of the laptop was still his computer repair shop, the Mac Shop. By saying that the information in the New York Post’s story was obtained through a hack, Twitter defamed Isaac by implying that he was a hacker, the lawsuit alleged.
As a result, Isaac received threats and negative reviews of his business, which he eventually had to shut down, according to the lawsuit. Isaac sued Twitter for $500 million and requested a public retraction.
Judge Beth Bloom dismissed the case Monday. Bloom said that the court does not have subject matter jurisdiction to hear the case because Isaac “fail[ed] to allege complete diversity,” which means that all the plaintiffs and all the defendants must be from different states. Because Twitter is headquartered in Delaware and Isaac is a Delaware resident, the complete diversity requirement is not met, Bloom said.
The case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning that Isaac is free to bring forward another lawsuit on the same grounds if he can show that the court has jurisdiction.