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FIRST ON FOX: The Superior Court of California is ordering Kevin Morris, an attorney and close associate of Hunter Biden, to pay $50,000 to former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler and Marco Polo, the conservative nonprofit research group he founded, to cover legal expenses.
The ruling ends a protracted dispute over whether Ziegler impersonated a Democratic strategist to pry sensitive information out of Morris about the Hunter Biden laptop during a conversation over the phone in 2022.
To Jennifer Holliday, Ziegler’s attorney, the judgment doesn’t even begin to make up for three years of legal battles.
“It’s not really how I envisioned it would play out, and I don’t think that’s how the Constitution envisions that something like this would play out — which is why we filed a petition with the Supreme Court of the United States to review,” Holliday told Digital.
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Entertainment lawyer Kevin Morris arrives to the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building on Jun. 06, 2024 in Wilmington, Delaware amid the trial for Hunter Biden’s felony gun charges. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“I certainly hope that they will take a really hard look at what happened here because this is not a situation that should have ever happened,” she added.
Holliday is asking the Supreme Court to evaluate California’s anti-SLAPP law, arguing the state’s protections for free speech actually only worsened the case by prolonging what she believes were weak accusations.
A person familiar with Morris’ case called the conclusion a formality and downplayed the Supreme Court filing as unlikely to receive a review, noting that Ziegler’s representation had requested as much as $300,000 to conclude the case.
Morris’s legal battle with Ziegler began when Morris picked up the phone and spoke with someone whom he thought was a Democratic operative about the laptop back in 2022. But when, after the call, he received an image depicting a squid, the phrase “NOTHING IS BEYOND OUR REACH,” and the words “Marco Polo,” Morris realized his mistake.
Morris concluded the caller must have been Ziegler, a Republican strategist who had worked on combing through the contents of the laptop and who had gone on to found Marco Polo.
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Morris accused Ziegler of harassment, criminal harassment, criminal impersonation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The case soon soured for Morris when he failed to establish a connection between his phone call and Ziegler.
With the suit in the rearview mirror, Holliday marveled that Morris had kept up his case for three years without ever offering evidence that the call had been linked to Ziegler.
“There was no phone number that was ever presented to the court, to the Court of Appeal, to me, in discovery, anywhere,” Holliday said.
Asked about whom the caller might have been, Holliday said she was not at liberty to discuss the issue.
Asked about the case, Ziegler said Morris was an enabler of Hunter Biden who had knowingly brought a weak case against him.
“Morris is the one responsible for all the bull—- that Hunter pulled over the last couple years,” Ziegler said, referring to funding Morris reportedly gave the younger Biden amid his legal services.
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Garrett Ziegler, author of the Report on the Biden Laptop, is photographed outside the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building in Wilmington, Del., on Sept. 7, 2023. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
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Ziegler’s representation has secured a debtor’s exam request for Morris if he hasn’t paid the $50,000 sum ordered by the court within 30 days.
