At least Hunter Biden now admits that the emails, pictures and documents are his. That’s progress.

It used to be that Hunter, while caviling about the invasion of his privacy, would not admit that the infamous laptop data actually belonged to him.

Now, in his latest round of vexatious litigation – this time, a lawsuit against 2020 Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani, as well as Robert Costello, Giuliani’s former lawyer and fellow former federal prosecutor – Team Biden’s position is marginally less incoherent.

Yes, Hunter now concedes, the data belong to him – the damning emails implicating his father, the president of the United States, in the lucrative Biden family influence-peddling business; the records of financial transactions and banking transfers supporting allegations that Hunter and his family, including his father, sold access to Joe Biden’s political influence; the sordid video images depicting the younger Biden’s rampant drug abuse and cavorting with prostitutes – which, along with the money-grabbing, provided rich veins of potential blackmail for hostile foreign regimes to tap.

Hunter’s claim that he was not the generator of this information was never remotely plausible.

That, despite his father’s mendacious assertion, at a 2020 presidential debate, that data resulted from a Russian intelligence operation – a claim manufactured by self-proclaimed “non-partisan” (i.e., Democrat-friendly) former intelligence officials, whose impetus to discredit the patently authentic data was a nudge by the Biden campaign, particularly Antony Blinken, now the Secretary of State.

In that same run-up to the 2020 election, the bogus Russian disinformation story was peddled by the FBI, too, even though the bureau had been given the laptop in 2019 and knew it had been generated by Hunter Biden, not Moscow’s spooks.

That didn’t stop top FBI counterintelligence agents from regurgitating the Russian disinformation nonsense to congressional Democrats (who duly leaked it to complaisant journalists), or from inducing social-media platforms to suppress the data – including The New York Post’s reporting on it.

Three years later, so much analysis has been done on the data’s provenance that even Team Biden can’t bring itself to disclaim authenticity, which is saying something.

So we’re on to the next whopper – one so vertiginous that Hunter’s lawyers confine it to a footnote in their latest rambling lawsuit: While acknowledging that the data is his, the ne’er-do-well first son does not admit – though, cutely, does not deny – that he gave Delaware computer repairman John Paul Mac Isaac the infamous laptop from hell on which the information was stored.

Why play this silly game? Because Hunter’s lawsuits risibly allege that his stored digital information was hacked – if not by the Russians, then by Mac Isaac, Giuliani, Costello, former Trump aide Steve Bannon, and who knows who else.

Implicit in the concept of hacking – computer theft – is that access to data was obtained without the owner’s permission.

Hence, if Hunter admits that he brought a damaged laptop to Mac Isaac, with the precise understanding that Mac Isaac would gain access to its data so for purposes of extraction and preservation, then it becomes numbingly obvious that the stored digital information was not hacked.

Moreover, if he cops to bringing a laptop to Mac Isaac, then Hunter must confront the humiliating reality that, in his drug-addled state, he abandoned the device by ignoring Mac Isaac’s repeated requests that come pick it up and pay his bill.

And let’s not forget that Mac Isaac voluntarily reported the incident to the FBI, which eventually retrieved a copy of the data.

Why does that matter?

Well, you may have noticed that, the FBI and the Biden Justice Department have not prosecuted anyone for hacking Hunter’s computer.

Mac Isaac not only explained to the bureau how he came into possession of the laptop; he provided investigators with a work order signed by Hunter (dated April 12, 2019), as well as an electronic invoice (for the $85 repair cost) he sent Hunter five days later.

Biden’s newest lawsuit is part of a scorched earth strategy of his own that has been counterproductive, to put it mildly.

The civil lawsuits are foolish. No good judge will abide being toyed with this way: Hunter is not going to be allowed for long to speculate – not only without evidence but in the teeth of overwhelming counter-evidence – that the people he’s suing may have committed felony computer theft, while coyly dodging the question of whether he voluntarily gave the laptop to Mac Isaac.

In the interim, by suing, the president’s son opens himself up to discovery and depositions that could be used against him in the criminal proceedings he now faces.

Speaking of those, Hunter could have ended all that by accepting the sweetheart plea bargain his father’s Justice Department offered – two tax misdemeanors, no prosecution on gun charges, and a DOJ recommendation of no jail time.

Instead, Team Biden’s approach of attacking when the situation cries out for retreat – the same mindless aggression that instigated the civil suits – led to the implosion of the plea deal.

As a result, instead of being scot-free, Hunter has now been indicted on three felony gun charges and faces the imminent likelihood of at least two felony tax-evasion charges.

The president’s son is in a hole of his own making. Maybe he ought to – oh, I don’t know – stop digging?

Andrew C. McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor.