Hunter Biden filed a lawsuit against Fox News on Sunday over a fictional series the network created nearly two years ago depicting a mock trial of the first son, and allegedly violating “revenge porn” laws by airing lewd images of him during the program.
By airing the mock trial show, “The Trial of Hunter Biden,” Fox News “targeted Mr. Biden in an effort to harass, annoy, alarm, and humiliate him, and tarnish his reputation,” the lawsuit suggests.
Hunter Biden is suing Fox News in the New York County Supreme Court and seeks a jury trial to decide whether Fox will have to pay damages and forfeit its right to disseminate lewd images of him.
The fictional series depicts a trial in which Hunter Biden faces bribery and Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) charges in connection with his lucrative foreign business dealings. It features a judge, witnesses, and evidence from Biden’s abandoned laptop archive, including lewd images his lawsuit says were distributed without his consent.
“Fox published and disseminated these Intimate Images to its vast audience of millions as part of an entertainment program in order to humiliate, harass, annoy, and alarm Mr. Biden and to tarnish his reputation,” the lawsuit asserts.
Images from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop archive depicting his drug-fueled escapades and misadventures were removed from Twitter, now known as X, last year for violating the platform’s “revenge porn,” policy. The lawsuit suggests Biden suffered lasting emotional distress and irreparable damage to his reputation because the images were widely circulated.
In April, Fox News took down the show following a warning from Biden’s legal team about the pending lawsuit. The mock trial series was previously available on Fox News’s streaming platform and other widely used streaming services.
While Hunter Biden is a convicted felon, and is scheduled to stand trial again in September, he has not been charged with FARA violations or bribery related offenses.
“This entirely politically motivated lawsuit is devoid of merit. The core complaint stems from a 2022 streaming program that Mr. Biden did not complain about until sending a letter in late April 2024,” a Fox News spokesperson told NR in a statement.
“The program was removed within days of the letter, in an abundance of caution, but Hunter Biden is a public figure who has been the subject of multiple investigations and is now a convicted felon. Consistent with the First Amendment, FOX News has accurately covered the newsworthy events of Mr. Biden’s own making, and we look forward to vindicating our rights in court.”
Filing high-profile civil lawsuits against political opponents is an aspect of Hunter Biden’s aggressive legal strategy. Last year, he sued former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani over the dissemination of his abandoned laptop archive, a lawsuit Biden dropped after his gun conviction last month.
He is also suing the owner of the laptop repair shop where he left his computer, a former Trump aide who uploaded his laptop data to a public website, and the IRS over whistleblower testimony from two IRS agents.
A Delaware jury convicted Hunter Biden in June on three federal gun charges for lying about his drug usge on gun paperwork and possessing a firearm in October 2018 while he was addicted to crack cocaine. His sentencing is set to take place later this year.
At the gun trial, data from Biden’s laptop was part of a trove of evidence the prosecution presented to show he was addicted to crack cocaine around the time of the gun purchase. FBI special agent Erica Jensen, a 20-year veteran of the bureau, testified about how federal investigators obtained the laptop data and verified it by cross referencing the laptop’s serial number with Biden’s Apple iCloud backup servers.
In September, Hunter Biden will be on trial again for nine federal tax charges, to which he pleaded not guilty. He allegedly failed to pay over $1.4 million of taxes across a four year period when he made roughly $7 million of income.