Hunter Biden's Lawyers Threaten Fox News, Reportedly Plans to Sue Network
UPDATE, May 2, 2024: The article has been revised to include a statement from Fox News.
Attorneys for Hunter Biden plan to “imminently” sue Fox News for alleged defamation for publishing and airing images of him that he views as defamatory.
The reported coming lawsuit surrounds sexually explicit images that have circulated online now for years that presumably originated from the son of President Joe Biden’s former laptop.
The computer was reportedly abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019, and it became the property of the man who owned the store — John Paul Mac Issac — as the New York Post reported when it broke the story in October 2020.
Isaac previously said that he copied the hard drive before the FBI seized it in 2019 and that what he saw on the hard drive disturbed him.
Nearly four years after nude images of the president’s son began circulating, CNN reported on Monday that Hunter Biden intends to sue Fox News in a “strategy to publicly fight back against conservative media.”
Per CNN, Fox News and Fox Corporation were each recently sent letters from Hunter Biden’s legal team that called explicit images of their client “hacked.”
The letter likened publishing blurred versions of the images to breaking “revenge porn” laws.
“FOX knows that these private and confidential images were hacked, stolen, and/or manipulated digital material,” the letter stated.
CNN reported, “[Hunter Biden is] seeking corrections and retractions on air and in online articles to claims that President Biden and his son engaged in a bribery scheme abroad.
“Hunter Biden’s legal team has undertaken an aggressive legal and public relations strategy for several months. His lawyers have fired off letters demanding investigations into Hunter Biden’s opponents and filed a series of lawsuits against his detractors.”
MSNBC, which also obtained the letters, reported on the air Monday that Hunter Biden would “imminently” sue Fox News.
BREAKING: Lawyers for Hunter Biden plan to sue Fox News ‘imminently, according to a letter sent to the network and obtained by NBC News. pic.twitter.com/ydfBYKhBFu
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 29, 2024
Attorneys for Hunter Biden had not filed a lawsuit as of Monday afternoon.
CNN reported the 54-year-old’s legal representatives “anticipate” such a suit in the near future.
The lawyers also want Fox News to retract any reporting about former FBI source Alexander Smirnov, who has been charged by the Justice Department with allegedly lying to federal agents.
The DOJ in a statement two months ago alleged that Smirnov was lying when he previously told the FBI that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden were engaged in a scheme in Ukraine to use the latter’s influence to cash in.
Hunter Biden’s attorneys stated that the indictment of Smirnov required a retraction on Fox News’ coverage of the corruption claims he made before he was charged in February with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record.
Fox News addressed the claims in a statement to The Western Journal on Tuesday.
“Hunter Biden’s lawyers have belatedly chosen to publicly attack Fox News’ constitutionally protected coverage regarding their client,” it said.
“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,” the network said.
“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,” it said.
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