Constitutional law expert Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Thursday that he fully sympathizes with and understands where first son Hunter Biden is coming from in threatening to bring defamation lawsuits against his longtime critics over the use of the data on his infamous laptop.
"If he is innocent, he should be fighting back," Dershowitz said during an appearance on Newsmax's "Spicer & Co." "He shouldn't have to fear depositions. That's my kind of strategy generally, and so I approve of it.
"If, on the other hand, he has an enormous amount to hide, then he can't really afford to bring lawsuits because that does open him up to discovery, depositions, interrogatories; and it can make your life miserable," he continued. "But, if you want to, in the end, show your innocence and have the truth come out, being aggressive is a far better strategy than being passive and letting them just go after you without any response. So I fully sympathize and understand with him, though it might backfire, depending on the facts."
Last week, Biden's lawyers admitted that the laptop abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019 belongs to him.
The acknowledgment was made in a letter asking the Department of Justice to investigate allies of former President Donald Trump and others who accessed and disseminated personal data from the laptop, which Biden dropped off at a Wilmington computer repair shop and never returned to claim.
Shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac admitted to reviewing private and sensitive material from Biden's laptop, including a file titled "income.pdf," and sending a copy to Rudy Giuliani's lawyer, Robert Costello, who shared it with Giuliani, an ally of Trump's.
When asked to discuss how Biden's legal team could claim defamation when what's been said about him in the press allegedly is corroborated by the contents of the laptop, Dershowitz said, "It depends on what's corroborated.
"There's a big difference between a person doing things that we shouldn't have done, which clearly is true of Hunter Biden, and the statements made about him being true," he continued. "Both can be the facts. That is, the statements made about him could be reckless and, on the other hand, he could have done bad things that are on the laptop."
Dershowitz added that "this is a moving parts situation," in that "the more he sues, the more stuff will come out; but the more he remains silent, the more inferences."
Stating that litigation today "has become a blood sport," the Harvard Law School professor emeritus said his advice to anyone is "don't start litigation unless you can afford to finish it."
"But if you think you've been defamed, if you think you've been falsely accused, if you don't fight back, people will assume that there's something to the charges," he said.
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