Melissa Cohen Biden – the wife of Hunter Biden – lashed out at a former Trump White House aide during a Tuesday appearance in court to support her husband, who has been charged with three felonies stemming from a 2018 firearm purchase.
Her remarks were directed at Garrett Ziegler, who was sued by Hunter Biden last year for publishing the contents of his infamous laptop.
Approaching Ziegler at the trial, Biden's wife pointed her finger at him and said, "You have no right to be here, you Nazi piece of s---."
Ziegler, who leads the nonprofit group Marco Polo, did not respond to Melissa Cohen Biden's remarks at the time.
Ziegler confirmed the encounter, which was first reported by NBC News, and told the outlet, "It's sad I've been sitting here the whole time and haven’t approached anyone."
"For the record, I’m not a Nazi, I’m a believer in the U.S. Constitution. I haven’t said one thing to them," Ziegler added.
Regarding Ziegler's encounter with Melissa Cohen Biden, Marco Polo wrote in a tweet, "The wife has the same level of impulse control as Hunter. To the family bringing decency back, anyone who is perceived as opposition is a Nazi."
"Truly contemptible liars & scoundrels," the group added. "We don’t respond in kind in the back of a courtroom, because we’re gentlemen who do not berate women."
Hunter Biden's lawsuit against Ziegler, which was filed last September, alleged that he had violated federal computer laws by hacking into the now-infamous laptop that was left in a Delaware repair shop in 2019.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, accuses Ziegler and Marco Polo, as well as 10 unidentified associates, of spreading "tens of thousands of emails, thousands of photos, and dozens of videos and recordings" that were considered "pornographic" on the laptop.
Marco Polo is a self-described nonprofit research group "exposing corruption & blackmail." The website has several sections pertaining to Biden’s laptop, including his emails, text messages, phone calls and financial data that culminates into a massive "online searchable database."
In the 14-page civil complaint, Biden’s attorneys allege that Ziegler is a "zealot" who has unleashed a "sustained, unhinged and obsessed campaign" against the entire Biden family for over two years and "spent countless hours accessing, tampering with, manipulating, altering, copying and damaging computer data" with his associates.
"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," attorneys Abbe Lowell, Bryan Sullivan, Zachary Hansen and Paul Salvaty wrote.
HUNTER BIDEN’S DRUG USE: WHAT THE PROSECUTION NEEDS TO PROVE AND WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW
In March, Ziegler sought to have a judge who was appointed by President Biden removed from the case. He argued that the outcome of the lawsuit not only has implications for the congressional impeachment inquiry, but also the 2024 election.
In a recent motion in U.S. District Court for Central California, Ziegler's attorney, Robert Tyler, requested that Judge Hernán D. Vera recuse himself from the case because his "impartiality will be reasonably questioned." Vera made donations to Joe Biden’s campaign for president in 2020. He also was appointed to his position by President Biden just three months before Hunter Biden filed the lawsuit against Ziegler and one day after then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announced a presidential impeachment inquiry had commenced in Congress.
Tyler emphasized that he is not arguing against Vera's integrity and assumes the court system assigned the judge to Hunter Biden's lawsuit at random.
"But there’s something called forum shopping that lawyers do," he told Fox News Digital at the time. "And here’s a case where our client resides in Illinois, he has no contact with California such that California should have any jurisdiction over this case, yet Hunter Biden’s lawyers filed this lawsuit to the Central District of California just shortly after Judge Vera’s appointed."
Hunter Biden's lawsuit seeks a jury trial based on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California's Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act.
Ziegler’s attorney counters that the former Trump aide and associates "prepared a credible investigative report," known as the "Report on the Biden Laptop," not to wage a campaign against Hunter Biden, but to "expose instances of foreign compromise" by Hunter Biden and his father, President Biden, which are "matters of great public interest and concern." In preparing the report, Ziegler relied on copies of files from the laptop that "had already been widely circulated since at least October 2020 to numerous media outlets," Tyler wrote.
The repair shop owner turned the laptop over to the FBI on or around October 2019 after discovering its "disturbing materials," Tyler's motion noted.
The motion stated that Ziegler’s website with the Biden laptop report has been accessed by over 5 million Americans since its inception in June 2023 and more than 8 million Americans have accessed the free digital version of the report made available in November 2022.
Fox News' Jamie Joseph and Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
