Hunter Biden, the son of the US president, has filed a lawsuit against Fox News, which produced a series recounting his fictional trial using intimate footage of the plaintiff, according to a court document made public Monday.
“The Trial of Hunter Biden,” a six-episode miniseries, was broadcast in 2022 on Fox Nation, the streaming platform of the favorite channel of American conservatives, owned by the Murdoch family media empire.
The program warned viewers of the fictional nature of the trial, while imagining Joe Biden’s son being prosecuted for international corruption, accusations that have been made for years by Trump supporters who point to Hunter Biden’s past business ties with Ukraine and China. These accusations have so far never led to legal proceedings. The series also used images of Hunter Biden naked and during intimate relations, to “humiliate, harass, injure and tarnish (his) reputation,” denounces the complaint dated Sunday, and filed in a civil court in New York, with a view to a trial for compensation.
The images came from a laptop that Hunter Biden dropped off at a computer repair shop but never picked up. Its contents have since circulated, while also being the subject of widespread conspiracy theories.
Sued for pornodivulgence, unjust enrichment and moral prejudice, Fox News considered Monday that “this legal action, entirely motivated by political considerations, is without any merit”. The Murdoch group channel argues that Hunter Biden had never complained before sending a formal notice, at the end of April 2024, and that the series had then been withdrawn, “as a precaution”.
Hunter Biden has since been convicted by a jury of illegally possessing a firearm in a federal trial that has shone a spotlight on his years of addiction to alcohol, cocaine and crack. He is due to appear in court in September in a separate tax fraud case, a trial that threatens to encumber his father’s presidential campaign.
According to his lawyers, excerpts from the series, as well as promotional links, are still circulating on the Internet.
Fox News has been singled out for feeding disinformation about Covid-19 and serving as a megaphone for Donald Trump’s false theory of a rigged 2020 presidential election in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. In 2023, it had to pay the staggering sum of $787.5 million to electronic voting machine manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems, at the center of this false theory, to avoid a trial.
