A lawyer for Hunter Biden sent a cease and desist letter to Donald Trump’s legal team on Thursday, warning the former president to stop spreading dangerous rhetoric online, ABC News first reported.
In the letterattorney Abbe Lowell argued that Trump’s messages and language “could lead to [Hunter Biden’s] or the injury to his family,” citing several examples from recent months.
Trump has frequently targeted Hunter Biden — in fact, Lowell claimed in the letter that his name appeared more than 20 times in Trump’s posts in July alone.
This week, Trump dragged Hunter Biden’s name amid an investigation into a small bag of cocaine found this month near a visitor entrance to the White House, suggesting the cocaine may have belonged to Hunter Biden, who is a recovering drug addict.
“You know, if Mr. Trump doesn’t, that Mr. Biden has neither committed nor been charged with the charges your client is claiming…and the Biden family was not in the White House (much less in the vestibule) around the time the cocaine was discovered,” Lowell wrote. The Secret Service concluded the cocaine investigation on Thursday without any suspects being found.
A day later, Trump posted a message attacking David Weiss, the federal prosecutor who oversaw Hunter Biden’s tax investigation, according to the letter. Biden reached an agreement in June and will plead guilty to certain federal charges. Trump called Weiss a “coward” and claimed he “gave a ticket instead of a death sentence.”
“You can answer that it was just a figure of speech. However, we have seen that what could pass for such a sentence when pronounced by [rational] people are heard by too many people in this country as a terrible injustice for which they must take physical and violent action,” Lowell wrote in the letter, referring to Trump. alleged incitement to attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Throughout the letter, Lowell continued to cite notable examples of Trump using dangerous rhetoric and language to incite violence. Last month, Trump also posted on his social media site the alleged address of former President Barack Obama’s residence in Washington, D.C., NBC News reported. The post was shared by Capitol riot defendant Taylor Taranto, who was arrested June 29 after approaching Obama’s house while his van was parked nearby with weapons inside.
“This is not a false alarm,” Lowell wrote in the letter. “We are just one such social media post away from another incident, and you should make it clear to Mr. Trump – if you haven’t already – that Mr. Trump’s words have wronged in the past and threaten to do it again if it doesn’t stop.
Trump faced legal repercussions for the rhetoric he spouted both online and offline, which, as Lowell warned in the letter, has the potential to escalate if he don’t come back to it. The attorney encouraged the former president’s legal team to explain “how his incitement can hurt people more and get him in even more legal trouble.”
HuffPost contacted Trump attorney Joe Tacopina, who declined to comment.