Hunter Biden is suing Fox News over a fictional six-part miniseries in which it staged a criminal trial related to his foreign business dealings.
In a lawsuit filed on Sunday in New York’s state Supreme Court, Biden alleges the series “intentionally manipulates the facts” and “distorts the truth” while displaying images of him in the nude and engaged in sex acts. He brings claims for a violation of a New York’s so-called revenge porn law, intentional infliction of emotional distress and unjust enrichment.
Fox pulled the miniseries, “The Trial of Hunter Biden,” from its streaming platform in April after it was threatened with a lawsuit. Biden claims the network continues to profit off of promotional reels and clips.
In a statement, a Fox spokesperson said in a statement that the “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,” the Fox statement added. “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.”
According to the complaint, Fox disseminated intimate images of Biden “to tarnish his reputation” with the knowledge that they were illicitly obtained. “The unlawful publication and dissemination of the Intimate Images by Fox was not made for a legitimate public purpose, where the miniseries featuring a mock trial is not accurately reporting on newsworthy events but rather, is a fictionalized trial of a nonexistent case against Mr. Biden, produced for entertainment purposes,” the lawsuit states.
In addition to Fox Nation, the series was available on DirecTV, Apple TV, Roku and YouTube TV. Lawyers for Biden in April sent Fox a letter demanding the removal of the series and to direct third-party streaming services to do the same.
In the series, a TV judge states, “This is a mock trial. It is not a real proceeding. To be clear, Hunter Biden has not been implicated in or charged in any crimes arising from his activities, alleged activities.”
The series was produced while former chief legal and policy officer Viet Dinh was still with the company. Under his stewardship, the network paid $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems over false claims that it helped rig the 2020 election and reached a multimillion dollar settlement with the parents of a slain Democratic party staffer, who Fox claimed leaked emails during the 2016 election. It continues to fight another lawsuit from and against voting tech company Smartmatic.
“Fox disregarded the known legal implications of unlawfully publishing and disseminating the Intimate Images in order to humiliate, harass, annoy, and alarm Mr. Biden, to tarnish his reputation, and for financial gain,” the complaint states. “In other words, like in the Dominion case, Fox knew its conduct was unlawful but it did it anyway.”
Biden was convicted last month on federal gun charges, though he’s never been charged for crimes connected with bribery or foreign lobbying at the center of Fox’s series. He faces a second trial later this year for tax evasion.