Lawyers representing President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, have notified Fox News of an “imminent” lawsuit over potential claims the network engaged in a conspiracy to defame the president’s son and unlawfully publish his nude photos.
“We are litigation counsel to Robert Hunter Biden (“Hunter” or “Mr. Biden”) in his claims against Fox News Channel and Fox News Digital (collectively “FOX”), as well as other joint tortfeasors, arising out of, among other things, their conspiracy and subsequent actions to defame Hunter Biden and paint him in a false light, the unlicensed commercial exploitation of his image, name, and likeness, and the unlawful publication of hacked intimate images of him,” reads an April 23 letter from Tina Glandian, an attorney representing Mr. Biden.
Geragos & Geragos, the law firm representing Mr. Biden in this matter, provided NTD News with a copy of its April 23 letter.
Bribery Allegations
The legal notice specifically calls on Fox News to issue retractions and corrections over its coverage of what the letter described as “debunked bribery allegations” involving Hunter Biden. The letter argues Fox News engaged in “politically-motivated attacks” on President Biden and his family with its coverage of allegations of a $5 million payment to Hunter Biden and his family by a foreign national, in exchange for a policy outcome.
Congressional Republicans have, for several years, questioned Hunter Biden’s involvement in various foreign business dealings, including his work on the board of a Ukrainian gas company called Burisma Holdings. The $5 million bribery allegation was derived from a report by an FBI confidential informant obtained by House Republicans and released last year. In February, the U.S. Department of Justice formally identified the source of the bribery allegation as Alexander Smirnov, and charged him with fabricating the bribery allegation.
In their April 23 letter, Mr. Biden’s lawyers insist that “despite knowing that the source of the bribery allegation was an unverified and uncorroborated claim from a foreign national who was an FBI informant and that the allegation was dubious at best, FOX repeatedly reported that the source of the bribery allegation was ‘highly credible.'”
“Then, in a brazen show of no remorse, rather than walk back the story and correct the record, FOX double-downed on the debunked bribery allegation and used Smirnov’s indictment to claim this is an ‘intimidation tactic’ aimed at silencing ‘whistleblowers,’ to blame the FBI for its credulity, and to suggest an even deeper conspiracy,” the letter from Ms. Glandian reads.
Mr. Biden’s lawyers have not formally filed suit against Fox News, but have said they will reserve that right.
“In the interim, given that the bribery allegations have been confirmed to be false, we hereby demand that FOX take immediate steps to update its readers and viewers that the source of these allegations has been federally indicted for fabricating the allegations,” the letter states. “This would necessarily include updating all digital articles discussing the bribery allegations with editor’s notes informing readers of the indictment, and instructing FOX television hosts, including but not limited to Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters, and Maria Bartiromo, to inform their viewers on air that they have been sharing a debunked allegation from a source who has been federally indicted.”
Whether Mr. Smirnov fabricated the bribery allegations against the Bidens remains a key point in his criminal proceeding. His criminal trial is tentatively slated to begin on Dec. 3, 2024.
“Hunter Biden’s lawyers have belatedly chosen to publicly attack Fox News’ constitutionally protected coverage regarding their client,” a Fox spokesperson told NTD News on Tuesday. “Mr. Biden is a public figure who has been the subject of investigations by both the Department of Justice and Congress, has been indicted by two different US Attorney’s Offices in California and Delaware, and has admitted to multiple incidents of wrongdoing.”
“Consistent with the First Amendment, Fox News has accurately covered these highly publicized events as well as the subsequent indictment of an FBI informant who was the source of certain claims made about Mr. Biden,” the network’s spokesman continued.
Responding to the Fox spokesman’s comment, a press representative for Geragos & Geragos called for a further retraction.
“In its statement today, Fox falsely states that Hunter Biden was the subject of an investigation by Congress, which mischaracterizes the plain facts of his litigation, and intentionally avoids telling their audience that their attacks on Hunter were ‘based’ on an informant who lied,” the Geragos & Geragos spokesperson wrote. “We demand that Fox immediately retract and correct today’s statement which is the latest example of its relentless attack on Hunter Biden in complete disregard for the truth.”
Biden Photos
In addition to their demands for Fox to correct and retract its prior coverage of the Biden family bribery allegations, Mr. Biden’s lawyers also took issue with Fox News’ publication of nude and intimate photos of Mr. Biden.
The photos were obtained from a laptop Mr. Biden allegedly abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop. The laptop contents began to circulate in October of 2020, after the computer repair shop owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, shared the laptop’s materials with federal investigators and later with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer and political ally of former President Donald Trump—President Joe Biden’s 2020 election opponent.
Since obtaining the photos, Fox has shared them across its various network properties. Fox also developed a six-part series for its Fox Nation digital streaming platform, which included the photos in a mock trial setting depicting “how a possible Hunter Biden trial might look.”
Hunter Biden’s lawyers contend that the mock trial series “was made for the purpose of trade and advertising, and merely exploits Mr. Biden’s name, image, and likeness for FOX’s commercial benefit” and thus “FOX is not protected by the newsworthiness exception to the right of privacy/publicity statutes.”
Mr. Mac Isaac sued Hunter Biden in 2022, alleging the president’s son defamed him in a televised interview.
“There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me,” Mr. Biden said during the interview. “It could be that I was hacked. It could be that it was the—that it was Russian intelligence. It could be that it was stolen from me. Or that there was a laptop stolen from me.”
Mr. Biden countersued Mr. Mac Isaac last year, arguing that “no matter how they came into his initial possession, Mac Isaac improperly accessed files that he admits were ‘none of [his] business’ even though he was never given permission by Mr. Biden to access or review any data of Mr. Biden’s.”
Mr. Mac Isaac contends that Hunter Biden signed a waiver that stated he had 90 days to collect his laptop from the computer repair shop before it would be considered “abandoned property.” But Hunter Biden’s counterclaim argues even if he did sign that waiver, the waiver terms were not valid under Delaware state law.
Mr. Biden has also sued Mr. Giuliani and another lawyer involved in the laptop controversy, Robert Costello. This lawsuit claimed Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Costello violated computer fraud laws and “at least to some extent, accessed, tampered with, manipulated, altered, copied and damaged” data belonging to Mr. Biden. The president’s son also sued former Trump White House aid Garrett Ziegler, raising similar data tampering and manipulation claims.
Noting Fox News had reported on Mr. Biden’s lawsuit against Mr. Zeigler, the April 23 demand letter states Fox “knows” the laptop materials “were hacked, stolen, and/or manipulated” and that Mr. Biden retained the “exclusive copyright” over the materials.
By Monday, Fox Nation had taken its six-part mock trial series featuring Mr. Biden’s nude photos offline.
“This program was produced in and has been available since 2022,” a Fox News Media spokesperson told NTD News. “We are reviewing the concerns that have just been raised and—out of an abundance of caution in the interim—have taken it down.”