Hunter Biden's legal team went on the offensive Wednesday, demanding state and federal investigations into the dissemination of his personal material — purported to be from his laptop — and threatening a defamation lawsuit against Fox News' Tucker Carlson for allegedly failing to correct false statements.

Purported copies of the laptop were widely circulated by Republican operatives to attack then-candidate Joe Biden before the 2020 presidential election, and the New York Post published a series of stories from the computer data.

"This failed dirty political trick directly resulted in the exposure, exploitation, and manipulation of Mr. Biden's private and personal information," Lowell wrote in his letters to Jennings and Olsen.

Costello said in an email to CBS News that Lowell's letters to the Justice Department and Delaware Attorney General "constitute a frivolous legal complaint trying to intimidate."

Among those Hunter Biden wants investigated are Garrett Ziegler, a former Trump administration aide, who was also the subject of a letter sent by Lowell to Robert Malone, the IRS' director of tax-exempt organizations.

Ziegler told CBS News in a statement that the "letter to the IRS about Marco Polo is full of speculations and basic misunderstandings about the case law surrounding 501(c)(3) organizations."