Cybersecurity Expert Awarded $800K in Defamation Case Over Hunter Biden Laptop Claims

On Monday, a jury delivered a verdict in a defamation case involving cybersecurity expert Yaacov Apelbaum and his company, XRVision, Ltd. The jury awarded $75,000 in compensatory damages and $125,000 in punitive damages for each of two defamatory statements, applied to both Apelbaum and XRVision. This totals $800,000 in damages.

Apelbaum is the founder of XRVision, a cybersecurity and analytics firm. In 2020, Apelbaum and XRVision gained media attention for their role in examining Hunter Biden’s laptop, analyzing its contents to assess the hard drive’s legitimacy.

Defendant Jordan Arthur Bloom, an independent journalist with a Substack blog, published an article on January 29, 2024, titled The Role of Yaacov Apelbaum in the Hunter Biden Drama. The article contained two allegedly defamatory statements:

• “Yaacov Apelbaum is an Israeli spy, and the sort of Israeli spy who would have good reasons to smear American facial recognition technology, because his company, XRVision, is a competitor.”
• “XRVision has provided sourcing to a bunch of conservative publications, including the Washington Times. So this is an Israeli spy who's deeply involved in shaping the Hunter Biden story.”

These statements were published on Bloom’s Substack and shared widely on Twitter and other platforms, where they were subsequently republished virally. The court noted that Bloom “intentionally failed to conduct any investigation” before publishing and “made zero effort to contact Plaintiffs to seek out their knowledge or position.”

Court Rules Statements Were Defamatory Per Se

Plaintiffs sued Bloom, and the court allowed the case to proceed. The court ruled that the statements constituted defamation per se, meaning they were inherently damaging to Apelbaum and XRVision’s professional reputations without requiring proof of tangible loss. The court explained:

“Allegations of close ties to a foreign intelligence agency could prejudice a cybersecurity professional and his firm.”

The court also credited the plaintiffs’ allegations that the statements were factually false, noting that Apelbaum had renounced his Israeli citizenship and was solely a U.S. citizen. The complaint further alleged that Bloom “conceived a storyline in advance of any adequate investigation and then consciously set out to insert Plaintiffs into his preconceived narratives.”