Nation

Peter Strzok’s wife appointed to high-ranking SEC role

Published

3 years ago

January 29, 2021

Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that Melissa Hodgman, the wife of disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok, was appointed to head the agency’s Division of Enforcement as its acting director.

“Melissa’s dedication to investor protection, broad experience in the Division, and proven track record of collaboration and creative problem solving make her ideally suited to this role,” SEC Acting Chair Allison Herren Lee said in the press release from last Friday. “As Associate Director, Melissa has overseen a wide range of complex and programmatically important matters, and has been a leading voice in the Division on critical issues of diversity, hiring, and labor-management relations.”

Hodgman has been working at the SEC since 2008 in a variety of litigation, the statement notes. When appointed to her new role, she had been working in the Division of Enforcement as its associate director.

“It has been my honor to serve with the incredibly talented staff across the Division of Enforcement for over a decade,” Hodgman said in the press release. “I am constantly inspired by the dedication of my colleagues in the Division and across the Commission, especially with the challenges of the last year. I look forward to continuing my work with them in the role of Acting Director and supporting the Commission’s mission of protecting investors and market integrity through the aggressive pursuit of all forms of fraud and misconduct in our markets.”

Her husband, Strzok, was infamously removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation in 2017 and subsequently fired by the FBI a year later over anti-Trump emails and text messages he exchanged with former FBI Attorney Lisa Page.

You can follow Douglas Braff on Twitter @Douglas_P_Braff.

Related Topics:FBI Lisa Page Peter Strzok sec

Nation

Hunter Biden Files Lawsuit Against Rudy Giuliani Over ‘Privacy Violation’

Published

7 hours ago

September 26, 2023

Alexander Carter

In a legal development that has garnered significant attention, Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, has filed a lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani, the former lawyer for President Trump. The lawsuit alleges that Giuliani violated Biden’s privacy rights by disseminating content obtained from Biden’s controversial laptop.

This complaint was submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and places the primary responsibility for the alleged violation of Biden’s digital privacy squarely on Giuliani. Additionally, the lawsuit names Robert Costello, a former federal prosecutor who had previously represented Giuliani, as a co-defendant.

According to the complaint, Giuliani and Costello are accused of dedicating substantial time and effort to search for, hack into, tamper with, manipulate, copy, disseminate, and scrutinize data they claim to have obtained from Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop computer. However, Biden’s attorneys vehemently argue that the data in question did not originate from a laptop but rather from an external drive. This external drive is reported to contain pictures, videos, emails, and other data that have created legal and political challenges for Hunter Biden since they were first published by the New York Post in 2020.

Giuliani and Costello have openly acknowledged obtaining copies of files from a hard drive device that Hunter Biden allegedly left at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019. This information was subsequently provided to the New York Post in October 2020, leading to a story that relied on Hunter Biden’s emails to suggest that President Biden was involved in a business deal with a Ukrainian company that had appointed Hunter to its board.

House Republicans initiated an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, alleging that he used his position as vice president to dissuade Ukrainian prosecutors from investigating the company employing his son. These lawmakers also claim that the president had a hand in various business dealings orchestrated by Hunter Biden. President Biden has consistently denied any involvement in his son’s business affairs.

According to reports from Fox News, Hunter Biden’s legal team had previously sent cease-and-desist letters to Giuliani and others who obtained and disseminated the laptop’s contents. The present lawsuit seeks a court order to prevent Giuliani and others from accessing, tampering with, manipulating, or copying Biden’s data. It also demands the return of the alleged “device/hard drive” to Hunter Biden, along with any backup files, cloud files, or copies of the data.

This lawsuit marks the latest chapter in a series of legal actions taken by Hunter Biden and his lawyers to counteract leaks of personal information that thrust his private life into the spotlight of conservative media outlets.

Earlier this month, Hunter Biden sued former President Trump’s aide Garrett Ziegler, accusing him of disseminating explicit content from the device. In March, Biden initiated a countersuit against John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of the Wilmington, Delaware, computer repair shop, accusing him of unlawfully disseminating personal information and invasion of privacy.

John Paul Mac Isaac initially filed a lawsuit against Hunter Biden, CNN, Politico, and Rep. Adam Schiff in October 2022, alleging defamation. Mac Isaac reported alerting the FBI after Hunter Biden failed to retrieve the laptop within three months of dropping it off at his shop. He claims that the laptop contained emails related to then-Vice President Joe Biden’s purported foreign business dealings and explicit videos.