Hunter Biden whistleblower speaks out… Remarkable interview… FBI agent threatened my life…
John Paul Mac Isaac had legal ownership of Hunter Biden’s laptop, followed the rules, did everything right, and still They destroyed him in order to protect a wealthy and powerful Democrat named Joe Biden.
A good man who represents the most vulnerable minority in the world — the individual — did everything he was supposed to do, everything they told him to do, and for that They took away everything he had and refused to protect him from one of the most obscene injustices you will ever read about.
Before a drunken man entered his life with three broken laptops, John Paul Mac Isaac owned a home, owned a small business, and had carved out a life for himself in Wilmington, Delaware. John Paul Mac Isaac wasn’t looking for trouble or to become famous or do anything other than quietly live his life. Then in walked a drunk, entitled, and corrupt Hunter Biden.
And even after he knew what he had, John Paul Mac Isaac didn’t try to financially or politically profit from the potential windfall handed to him and then legally surrendered to him by Hunter Biden. He still did the right thing. He never stopped doing the right thing.
Signs of support for John Paul Mac Isaac outside “The Mac Shop” in Wilmington, Delaware on October 21, 2020.(ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty)
And for that… For being nothing more or less than an innocent bystander who followed the rules, They destroyed John Paul Mac Isaac. He lost his whole life: his business, his trade, his privacy, everything that he’d worked for they took away from him.
He might even lose his home.
Who is They?
They is the government… The FBI that sat on explosive evidence that would have set John Paul Mac Isaac free, and did so to protect a wealthy and powerful Democrat named Joe Biden.
They is the “50 former intelligence officials” who smeared John Paul Mac Isaac as a Russian spy and did so to protect a wealthy and powerful Democrat named Joe Biden.
They is the all-powerful tech giants who falsely accused John Paul Mac Isaac of traitorous criminal behavior, who accused him of being a hacker, to protect a wealthy and powerful Democrat named Joe Biden.
And They is most certainly the corporate media, who knew all of the above was a lie, who knew the Hunter Biden laptop was legitimate, and still, for 17 months, spread and protected the lies that destroyed John Paul Mac Isaac’s life.
New York Times Now Admits Hunter's Laptop Is Real! Watch The Media When the Story First Broke… pic.twitter.com/mGSfXMz1zl
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) March 18, 2022
You can’t go to the media anymore. It used to be that if you could just get the truth to the media, the media would publish the truth and the truth would protect you. There are all kinds of movies about this, about how the goal is to find a heroic journalist who will tell the truth and save you… The Three Days of the Condor, The Pelican Brief, The China Syndrome… The idea was always this: if the government and big business were about to crush and destroy you — you, the individual, the brave truth-teller, the lonely whistleblower — there was always a safe place to run. There was always the New York Times or the Washington Post or CNN.
No more.
They’re all in on it.
Breitbart News interviewed John Paul Mac Isaac late last week. We wanted to give him a chance to share his story and tell it — other than editing for clarity and length — unfiltered.
Here it is…
BREITBART NEWS NETWORK First off, thank you for doing this Mr. Mac Isaac. Where I want to start, especially because the corporate media and social media have done so much to cover your story up, is to start at the beginning when the laptop was first brought into your store. Until all this happened, you did have a storefront, correct?
JOHN PAUL MAC ISAAC: Yes, in 2010 I opened the Mac Shop in the Trolley Square area of Wilmington. A little 20-foot retail space where customers could park right in front of the shop instead of having to walk through a shopping mall. I’d run out and pick up [the item to be repaired] for them, which was a lot more convenient than taking it to an Apple Store.
BNN: And you’ve since lost that store due to the fallout over the Hunter Biden laptop.
JM: Yes.
BNN: Now were you working that day when the laptop came in?
JM: It was April 12, 2019, and about ten minutes before closing. I remember I was climbing the walls to get out of the shop because it was Friday night and I had other places I wanted to be. I remember the door opening. There was a little chime on the door. I look up, and this is something you remember when you’re eager to get out of the shop on a Friday night, when there’s only a few minutes to go, and there’s a guy standing there holding three MacBook Pros. You realize, ‘This is the end of my evening.’
BNN: Always on a Friday night, right?
JM: (laughs) This customer with the three MacBooks was pretty intoxicated. He approached the counter and the three laptops basically slid out of his hands onto the counter. This kind of gave me a clue as to the individual’s care level when it came to their electronic devices.
BNN: What made you think Hunter was drunk?
JM: The smell preceded him. He had balance problems. Speech problems.
BNN: Got it.
The establishment media on Friday failed to retract reporting that Hunter’s “laptop from hell” was “Russian disinformation.” t.co
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) March 18, 2022
JM: So I inspected [the laptops] and explained they were liquid-damaged. He said he just wanted to get the data off of them. At this point, I have to get the customer into the system, and even if it’s a returning customer, if they are more than a few feet away, I have to ask their name [ed. note: Mr. Mac Isaac is legally blind]. He said his name was ‘Hunter.’ I asked, ‘What’s your last name,’ and there was a long pause, almost like he was surprised I didn’t instantly recognize him. So he responded, almost sarcastically, ‘Biden.’ Then I noticed the Beau Biden sticker on one of the laptops. That was when I made the connection to who he was and I assumed he was looking to get memories of his dead brother off the laptop. So I felt sorry for the guy and helped him recover the data of one of the laptops without charging him. I just gave him a keyboard to use because keys were missing on that laptop’s keyboard. He recovered that one himself in the shop.
Normally, I charge $200 for data recovery, but I charged him $85 to recover the remaining laptop. This guy had just lost his brother.
I then wrote up documentation saying we’re going to attempt data recovery. I worked with him for about 20 minutes. He left with two machines. I was left with one machine and signed paperwork allowing me to access the computer and recover data from it.
BNN: You said there were three laptops.
JM: One was a complete write-off. The liquid damage was too great. He took that one home along with the one he recovered in my shop with the keyboard. The one he left me with had power issues that made it a touch-and-go process for about 24 hours as I migrated the data.
BNN: So you complete the data recovery and what was the procedure from there?
JM: I contacted him the next day [April 13, 2019] and requested that he go and pick up a one terabyte external hard drive from, like a Best Buy, and if he could drop that off at his earliest convenience I would transfer everything from the damaged computer that was now on my secure store server.
BNN: Did you contact Hunter through email or phone?
JM: Phone.
BNN: Do you remember if you spoke with him or left a message?
JM: I want to say I left a message. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to him on the phone. I think it was the [April] 17th when he showed up to drop off the drive. It was in a Best Buy bag.
BNN: Was he sober during this visit?
JM: No, no, he was not sober.
BNN: Going back to the data recovery, at this point had you seen anything on that laptop? I’m unfamiliar with the process, so forgive me if that’s an obvious question.
JM: When you’re recovering data for a customer you want to verify it. You don’t want to call a customer and say, ‘Hey, I’ve recovered 300 gigs of data off of this, here you go,’ and then have them take it home just to discover that the data’s corrupted or it’s missing data or there’s an inability to access the data. Because this machine was unstable and kept powering on and off, there were multiple times I had to look at the data. Typically, when you’re dealing with a lot of data recovery from an unstable source, you want to look at things that are going to be the most susceptible to digital corruption. Videos have a tendency to show corruption easier than other files. Inspecting a video file for corruption is a good way to get a finger on the pulse of how well the rest of the data transfer is going.
BNN: Makes sense.
JM: The first time I spot-checked, I chose the biggest file, which was a video file, and it was video of him [Hunter] engaged in acts, multiple acts, that looked compromising and gross but embarrassing above all. But at this point, there were no red flags. His dad [Joe Biden] had not announced his candidacy yet. To me, then, this was just a drunk guy with some nasty stuff on his computer. It was not a political concern at that time.
BNN: And you’ve probably seen this before with other customers.
JM: Yes, but not this quantity. It was gross but it’s the job.
BNN: Did you come across any documents at this point.
JM: Yeah, during the spot-checking I opened a couple of documents that immediately stuck out. There was a file I think was called ‘Invoice’ and it had a purple dot next to it. On a Mac you can label files with different dots or flags, so you can search your computer that way, for all those files. This was obviously an important file, so I wanted to spot-check it and saw a lot of money exchanging hands: $2.5 million from Burisma, a statement that said you obviously can’t survive off of $550,000 a year. It just seemed really fishy and it seemed like an awful lot of money and a lot of clever ways to disguise and hide that money.
Okay, I thought, there’s a lot of gross stuff on this computer, but there’s probably financial concerns as well, and some of these documents were related to foreign entities and business dealings. This is when I started to get a little concerned. But at this point Joe had not announced his candidacy, so this is just another guy—do the job, get him to pick it up, and get it out of my shop.
BNN: At this point did you have any intention of doing anything other than just returning the laptop to Hunter like you would any customer?
JM: Right, I didn’t feel like I had anything to fear yet. It was gross and embarrassing, but this was still just a guy. It wasn’t until I’m making multiple attempts to get him to pick it up and his dad announces his run for president [on April 25, 2019] that I have a bigger fear. What I knew is that somewhere out there is signed paperwork in Hunter’s possession that says I was allowed to look and recover data from this laptop. I could only imagine now that there was someone on Joe Biden’s staff, Secret Service maybe, who’s responsible for wrangling in old Biden family electronic devices.
If you have someone in your family who is a bit of a loose cannon, wouldn’t you want to make sure their electronic devices are accounted for?
BNN: When he gave you the laptop he gave you authorization in writing to access all the content, correct?
JM: Correct. And he has his copy [of that agreement], which could be on the floor of his truck or on his nightstand. There was paperwork out there that gave me permission to go onto that drive and recover the data. And if someone was worried about what was on that drive, they were going to be worried about what I saw.
BNN: How much effort did you put into contacting him once the job was done.
JM: I called him up three or four times over the course of a month-and-a-half, two months. There was no response. But by this time Joe Biden has announced his run and I just wanted to get this out of my shop. I also sent him a way to pay electronically [the $85 bill was never paid] that would have sent him regular and automatic email reminders.
BNN: So Hunter drops this off on April 12, 2019. His dad announces his presidential run on April 25, 2019. You’ve made numerous attempts to reach Hunter and get this out of your shop. Then what…?
JM: It’s now May and things get busy in the shop. The kids are getting out of school and they want stuff fixed, along with educators. So it got pretty busy and I didn’t really pay attention to anything until I saw in the news that there were investigations into Burisma and Hunter Biden. And I’d remembered seeing those names while verifying the data. So I’m starting to really get concerned that there might be something on this drive. Part of me was curious but another part of me said ‘I need to get this laptop out of here.’ The whole time, hanging over my head is this document out there [in Hunter’s possession] giving me the okay to look at this drive.
As the summer progressed I became more concerned. Then it’s mid-July and after several more attempts to get him to pick it up, it became my property. After those 90 days, when it was legally my property, curiosity killed the cat and I went into the laptop.
[Ed. Note: When Hunter Biden signed the work agreement it stipulated (and this is standard with repair businesses) that if he didn’t pay for the repair or pick it up after 90 days, ownership transferred to Mr. Mac Isaac]
BNN: Now you’re looking at the laptop contents. Why?
JM: I went in because I was concerned there was activity related to Burisma. That was all I focused my attention on. I ignored the porn and everything that was salacious. I wanted to see if I was sitting on something that was potentially criminal and part of a criminal investigation. What I saw I would describe as sinister, a blatant pay-for-play scheme, and appeared to be very shady.
For example, you have a private Ukrainian citizen getting emails from the White House discussing scheduling with the [then] vice president [Biden]. Coming from a military family, especially my dad, I knew that the last thing you should do is discuss in an open-air email the vice president’s travels plans.
At this point, I realized that this is beyond me. I’m in too deep.
So by the end of the summer, I determined that I needed some level of protection, and the best way to do that was to get the laptop and the drive to the FBI.
BNN: So we’re in August, September?
JM: September.
BNN: So by now you’ve had the laptop since mid-April… What do you mean by ‘level of protection’?
JM: I was increasingly concerned someone was going to come for me and silence me, either legally or physically.
BNN: You were concerned for your physical safety?
JM: I believe I had just cause to be concerned for my physical safety, and I figured if I went to the FBI, I was doing the right thing, I was following what I call the chain of command and the FBI would then have a paper trail. This way I could never be accused of leaking things to the tabloids or trying to blackmail Hunter or anything an evil person would do in my situation. I wanted the FBI involved and to voice my concerns [to them] about my physical and legal safety. This is information that pertained to a candidate for the president of the United States. I trusted the federal government enough and wanted a paper trail that showed I was doing the right thing. The FBI would be aware of my situation and I would have a number I could call if I needed help. I just knew that the FBI was where this had to end up.
BNN: At this point, had you made any other copies of the hard drive, other than the hard drive Hunter gave you?
JM: No. At this point, it was only on my store server, which I keep for a couple weeks after the customer collects their device. That way [if there’s a problem] I can always go to the store server. His equipment was gathering dust on a shelf. I hadn’t made any other copies until I spoke with my father. I eventually told him, ‘Look, Dad, I have Hunter Biden’s laptop. It’s full of stuff that looks criminal. There’s embarrassing stuff. I’m worried if it gets out, if someone on the campaign discovers I have it, I’m going to be in trouble.’
I told him I want to take it to the FBI, but not in Delaware with its good-ole-boy politics. I asked him to take it to the FBI in Albuquerque. I mailed him a copy of the drive and the paperwork.
But also, by this time I had watched the FBI get involved with Trump and Russian collusion, and no longer felt that the FBI was a safe bet. So I made another copy of the drive and wrote a letter for Rudy Giuliani telling him what’s going on. All of that [the letter to Giuliani and a copy of the hard drive] was given to a trusted friend with instructions to hand the letter and hard drive to Giuliani if anything happened to me. That was my ‘Come save me’ plan.
BNN: We’re in September 2019 now and your friend is sitting on this letter and your dad is headed to the FBI?
JM: Right, Dad went to the FBI in October and the FBI slammed the door in his face, told him to get out of his office, lawyer up, and don’t talk about any of this.
BNN: Really?
JM: My father describes it as the most embarrassing moment of his life. This is a 30-year Air Force Colonel. To give 30 years of service and have a bureaucrat slam the door in your face… So we sat in the dark for a month scratching our heads, wondering what we do now. But the fear level ratcheted up because now the FBI knows we have this and doesn’t want to do anything. They kept the paperwork we presented [the repair agreement, etc.], but refused to accept the drive.
A month later an FBI agent I’ll call ‘Agent Joshua,’ reached out to my father. He wanted to contact me. I did some research on him online. He seemed like a good guy who had focused a lot of time going after child predators. So I trusted him and arranged a meeting at my house.
BNN: Where are we at now in the year, when this meeting was arranged?
JM: Mid-November. He showed up with another agent I’ll call ‘Agent Mike.’ I voiced my concerns about people foreign and domestic who might want to do me harm over what I’d seen. I told them I wanted a paper trail and the ability to contact them if something happens. They told me they couldn’t take the laptop due to legal concerns, but that they would get back to me. On the morning of December 9, Agent Mike called me for the serial number off the hard drive. Initially, they said they were just going to come in and make a clone of the drive. But they showed up at 10 a.m. in my shop with a subpoena for everything. Which I thought was great. I wanted them to take everything. I wanted it out of my shop.
BNN: Okay, so we’re in December, you’ve had this compromising information since April, for eight months, and you’ve not reached out to anyone other than the FBI, correct? You’d not even reached out to Giuliani, correct?. You had only sent the letter and hard drive to a friend to send to Giuliani in case of trouble, right?
JM: That’s right.
BNN: How many copies were there of the hard drive at this point?
JM: My dad had the copy that was supposed to go to the FBI, but they declined it. My friend had a copy for safekeeping. I had a copy on my store server.
BNN: Did the FBI ever demand all the copies?
JM: Nope. They never asked and I wasn’t about to advertise.
BNN: Smart.
JM: For perspective, it was around September 28 when the Wall Street Journal released the call that [then-President] Trump was putting pressure on [Ukraine President] Zelensky for information about what the Bidens were up to during the Obama administration and [Democrat House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi ran with that as grounds for impeachment. When I realized all of this, it was at the same time when my Dad was going to the FBI, and I thought the timing would be crucial because what was on the laptop showed why Trump called Zelensky to find out about the Bidens in Ukraine. I felt it was important that the laptop be admitted as evidence if there was an impeachment trial.
So now it’s December, these two FBI agents are in my house, and I gave them printouts from the laptop that would show them that the laptop was relevant evidence to the impeachment hearings. They refused to look at it or even pick it up. I never said ‘Hey, this is relevant to impeachment.’ I didn’t want this to be partisan. I just wanted to do the right thing. I didn’t want to be political about it, but the country was headed to its third impeachment in history and if I could prevent that embarrassment, I wanted to try.
BNN: And at this point, still, after eight months and all this political stuff going on, you had not reached out to the media or any political operatives, like Giuliani?
JM: No, it would have been completely inappropriate. Only the FBI. The FBI is where this had to go. So I give them everything and joke about leaving their names out of any book I write, and this is when Agent Mike says, ‘In our experience, nothing ever happens to people who don’t talk about these things.’
BNN: Whoa.
JM: I was so happy to get that stuff out of my life, it took me a couple of hours before I realized that was a thinly-veiled threat.
BNN: Sure was.
JM: They also said that if anyone comes looking for the laptop that I’m supposed to stall them, say it’s offsite and I’ll need a couple of days to get it. The FBI said I’m to take this person’s information, contact them, and the FBI will return everything to me. Well, that’s a red flag. How can they return everything if it’s going to be considered evidence?
Agent Mike told me he was my contact now, not Agent Josh, and I’m only to contact him via text message. No emails. A couple hours after they collected the equipment, I got a call from an IT guy at the Wilmington [FBI] office. They were having trouble accessing the drive. There were two separate calls where I had to help them through this. But this was another red flag. Why didn’t it go directly to DC? Why are they poking it with a stick in a field office?
Two weeks later, Agent Mike Calls and asks if anyone’s been in and seems surprised no one has.
This is mid-December [2019]. We get through the holidays. The impeachment hearings begin. I keep waiting for the laptop to be admitted into evidence. I’d seen what was on the laptop. I knew it was relevant to impeachment. At the very least it should have been given to the White House to aid in the president’s defense. So at this time, I can only assume the FBI had no intention of letting that laptop be submitted as evidence. Now I have to worry about myself, my own safety, and identity. I felt even more alone and exposed.
BNN: Is this when you went to Giuliani?
JM: No. With the help of my father and uncle, this is when we tried to go to congress. After the FBI/Justice Department, that seemed like the appropriate next step.
BNN: Republicans and Democrats, or just Republicans?
JM: Republicans. All I wanted, from day one, was to say safe, protect my business, and protect my status in my community. And I knew that in Northern Delaware [Biden country], I would have to remain in the shadows. So I enlisted two retired colonels, my father and uncle, to go to congress for me. They also tried to reach the White House without any luck.
And this is my biggest regret. My fear of being exposed sent my father and uncle out there [to congress] and they were met by the praetorian guard. I think I could have explained what I had better, especially in an environment where the fear of Russian disinformation was so great that anything like this was being shot down. Everyone was afraid to let anyone talk to anyone for fear of being caught up in a conspiracy.
BNN: Now you’ve been sitting on this for nine months. Why not go to the media?
JM: I wanted to do this right, through the correct channels. I tried the Justice Department. I tried congress. Now it’s August of 2020, I’ve been sitting on this for more than a year, and I decided it was time to go to the president, directly to his attorney. So I came out of the shadows and emailed Giuliani directly.
BNN: You waited until August of 2020, you waited 16 months?
JM: End of August, around the 24th.
BNN: Nine months after the FBI picked it up and did nothing with it? You gave the FBI nine months to do the right thing?
JM: Yep, and I get a call from Rudy’s lawyer, Bob Costello. It was a few days before they believed I was for real, and on August 28 I overnighted a copy of the drive. Bob wanted to pay for the shipping and reimburse me for the drive. I said no. I didn’t want any money [ed. note: Bob Costello confirmed this]. That’s how paranoid I was about anyone judging this in a certain light. Perceptions mattered. I didn’t want to go to the press because I didn’t want to be accused of not going through the proper channels or doing this for money. I’ve seen how things can pervert noble gestures and I didn’t want my actions seen as anything other than honorable.
BNN: No money changed hands. Even for your expenses?
JM: Right. And I didn’t want anyone to know who I was, including Giuliani. My thinking was geared towards saving my identity and business. So Rudy’s attorney has the drive and I’m happy. I’m thinking ‘mission accomplished.’ It’s over. I have a paper trail proving the FBI has it, the president’s lawyer has it, I haven’t profited, I’ve acted honorably… I thought my job was done.
Then on September 25th [Republican Sens. Chuck] Grassley and [Ron] Johnson release their senate report on Hunter’s business dealings. I went through it. I saw a lot of the money that was given to Hunter, but not what he had done to earn that money. So I reached out to Sen. Johnson’s office through the whistleblower link on the website and explained the situation I was in.
I heard back but the fear of Russian disinformation got me nowhere, other than a 90-minute call with two NSA guys and a Johnson aide grilling me about being a Russian spy instead of the laptop contents. They never once asked me about the laptop.
BNN: Sounds like they might have been worried about getting pranked.
JM: Exactly. I get it. I don’t fault them. The hysteria was so whipped up. I’m disappointed but life goes on… Then, on Sunday [October 11, 2020 ], a few days before the Post ran the story [on October 14]. I get a knock on my door. The shop’s closed, but I’m in there working and it’s a reporter, which scared the hell out of me. I never thought I would have to speak to a reporter. It was never my intention, but now my name is out there.
BNN: Who gave your name to the Post?
JM: I called Bob Costello and asked, ‘Why is the press here?’ He assured me, ‘The Post is going to run with the story but this is standard operating procedure. They want to ensure you’re a real person.’
Then on the night of the [October] 13th, I get a call from Hunter’s lawyer, George Mesires, and he asks me if I was still in possession of a laptop his client dropped off in April of the previous year. I told him what the FBI told me to say, ‘Please forward your credentials so I know are who you say you are.’ He agreed, but also asked questions about my physical location: ‘Is your store still in this shopping center?’ So now I’m scared. I didn’t go home that night. I call Bob Costello. He tells me, ‘The cat’s out of the bag. The Post is running the story tomorrow. There’s nothing that can be done.’ I slept at a friend’s house.
I wake up the next morning and my phone is blowing up. The Post forget to blur out my shop’s name in one of the images they published. So within an hour, everyone knew who I was. Then, within an hour, I watched Twitter and mainstream media block and repress the story.
BNN: It sounds like you had an agreement with the Post to remain anonymous.
JM: I didn’t want my name or shop name made public. It was a tiny mistake [on their part]. They blurred out everything in the Hunter paperwork except some fine print that said ‘the Mac Shop is not liable.’ They were very apologetic and, in my mind, the Post did what I needed them to do. They got the story out. And that’s what I wanted to protect my personal safety, especially if Biden won. If Biden won and this had not been made public, with all the people who knew I had this, how would I have survived?
BNN: Not to beat up the Post, but the ‘What if?’ question must be a pebble in your shoe. As in, ‘How different would my life be right now had the Post protected my anonymity?’
JM: I don’t look at it that way. My ‘What if?’ is ‘What if the FBI had done its job?’ What if they had taken the drive in October of 2019 and done something with it instead of doing nothing with it?’ I count four times, including the time Rudy handed it to them, that the FBI had the opportunity to do something and chose not to. If they had done something two-and-a-half years ago, maybe now I would have a job and I wouldn’t have had to have gone to Giuliani and Giuliani wouldn’t have had to go to the Post to get the truth out.
BNN: Excellent point. Tell me what happened to your life afterward. You lost your shop, correct?
JM: I did. I tried to stay open for another two-and-a-half weeks. Initially, because of the [corporate] media and social media suppression, my customers were unaware of the story. The only questions they had were about why there were police cars parked outside the shop.
BNN: Police cars?
JM: I have to say the Wilmington police department really stepped up after the death threats started pouring in. I called Bob Costello who called Wilmington PD who had a trooper out there whenever I was in the shop. I cannot thank them enough for that. I tell you, my mom felt better knowing I was being looked after.
BNN: What form did the death threats come in?
JM: I’d answer the phone and hear terrible things. I had to file a terroristic threat report with the police. Not so many emails or texts, but a lot of stuff about how ‘Putin thanks me for my service’ or how I’m a Russian stooge or how I’m a hacker who’s going to go to prison.
That’s what I didn’t get, why people were calling me a criminal. I had 20 or 30 voice mails the first day with people saying ‘I hope you get blown up in prison’ and ‘I hope you rot in jail,’ and I’m just scratching my head… I went to the FBI. If I’d done something wrong, they would have come after me.
It wasn’t until later that I realized this was because of Twitter. Twitter had labeled me a hacker by labeling the material ‘hacked material.’ So people identified me as a hacker who had hacked Hunter’s computer and stole his data and broke the law.
As far as the allegations, about me working for Putin, I can thank 50 intelligence officials for that one. My family served during the Cold War — my father and grandfather — so that didn’t sit well.
BNN: You had to close down after two-and-a-half weeks?
JM: Yes. Things were getting real sketchy. People were coming into the shop without computers, which was a bad sign. That happened a lot.
BNN: Did they come to glare at you or yell at you?
JM: Luckily it was busy, so when I’d ask if they needed help, they would say the computer was in their car and never come back. But I was only busy because the media blocked the story and my customers didn’t know. But that only lasted for a week or two. After the story seeped through, I lost my customers. Add that to the death threats and these visitors; it was becoming too dangerous. I needed to get out.
BNN: So the story broke on October 14, 2020. When did you abandon your shop?
JM: I closed up November 2. I left the state November 5.
BNN: How long were you gone?
JM: About a year
BNN: What’s your financial situation now?
JM: Bankruptcy is possible. I could lose my house. I’m not there yet and I hope not to lose my house. A friend finally convinced me to let her open a GiveSendGo account to help me out. That’s helping some. I’m also doing odd jobs, like going to people’s homes and picking up trash for twenty dollars an hour. It’s not like fixing computers like I used to. I’m reluctant to go back into that business because I have no control over who will show up.
BNN: After 17 months, are you still being harassed?
JM: Every day I wake up to someone posting a new thing about me being a Russian stooge… Putin invading Ukraine has created a groundswell of attacks against me. You know, ‘Putin thanks you for your service’ or ‘If you’re still out of money go to Putin, he paid you before.’ That’s daily.
BNN: How do they reach you?
JM: I have a YouTube channel where I defend myself and post Mac tech stuff. YouTube, naturally, is suppressing my reach, but people find it and post stuff in the comments or on my Facebook page, which I don’t care about anymore.
This stuff doesn’t really bother me. I’m a sticks ‘n stones kind of person. I’m a blind albino. I’ve been picked on forever and haven’t cared for 45 years. I just don’t want a brick through my window. And being legally blind, I would never see anyone coming. It’s caution now, not fear.
BNN: You’re 45-years-old, you handled a situation you did not ask to be dropped into about as honestly and honorably as anyone could, and your name has been smeared and run through the mud… You lost your shop, your business. It’s so unjust, I can hardly articulate it. How do you perceive your future? What’s your outlook on life?
JM: (laughs) With the New York Times finally coming out last week and admitting the laptop was real, that’s what I want to see more of. The more that news gets out that I’m not a hacker, not a Russian spy, not a traitor, the more quickly and efficiently I can rebuild my life. Once people realize ‘He’s not these things, He did the right things,’ then I feel I will have an opportunity to rebuild my life. Last week, with the New York Times’ admission, that was the first glimmer of hope I’ve had in over a year. It’s only one news source, but the Washington Post just reached out to me, so…
BNN: After all the lies the corporate media told about you, do you trust them now?
JM: I remember, the day after the story broke, it was October 15 [2019], and I had CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post in my store. It was immediately obvious they were only there to catch me in a lie. They were not there for the truth. They wanted to catch me revealing their narrative. I told them everything. I offered to show them a photo of Hunter’s signed authorization. They weren’t interested. They were only interested in their narrative. They were only interested in what their trusted government sources were feeding them. So they published nothing I said because it wasn’t what they wanted to hear— that this was a valid, factual, and consequential story.
Yesterday, I left a comment with the Washington Post and they probably won’t publish that.
BNN: CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post didn’t use anything you said back when the story first broke?
JM: They were only interested in discrediting me. If not, they would have told the public what I told them. The thing that messed me up is that I wasn’t ready for this. No one coached me. I didn’t even know what I could or could not say. I’m cornered in my shop by five members of the press. It was a very awkward interview. I was as uncomfortable as I have ever been. My main concern was protecting my family. I didn’t want my dad harassed so it was awkward.
BNN: I honestly don’t see anything you did wrong here. But let me ask if you would do anything differently if you got a do-over…
JM: Definitely. I would have grown a pair. If I had known then that it didn’t matter, that I was going to lose it all anyway—my business, maybe my home, and have to flee the state for a year… I would have reached out to Giuliani at the same time I reached out to the FBI.
BNN: You waited more than nine months after contacting the FBI to contact Giuliani.
JM: Yeah. I don’t blame myself, but had I known I would lose everything anyway, I feel like I could have done more had I been less concerned about protecting myself. Maybe I do blame myself.
BNN: Or just publish the contents of the laptop online.
JM: You know, doing that, the Wikileaks thing, just didn’t feel right. We have all these systems in place for a reason.
BNN: Good point.
JM: You have to trust that system, that it’s going to work. Once you go outside the system, it has no purpose. I felt I had to do it this. But given a second chance, I would do the same, but work the parallel angle with Giuliani and not worry so much about self-preservation. Some things are more important than self-preservation.
BNN: This country owes you an apology.
JM: Only half the country owes me an apology. The other half keeps me going. That positive feedback from those who know I did the right thing has been phenomenal. But people don’t understand what something like this can do to crush the individual. I was in exile in Colorado. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t go anywhere. Everything I loved and cared about was far away, including my cats. It takes a lot out of you emotionally. It got really tough. If it wasn’t for the support I received, not just from family and friends— but thousands and thousands of complete strangers that told me that what I did was right. If I didn’t have that, I don’t know where I would be right now. |
