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.
• Read also: Biden says he won’t overturn son’s conviction for illegal gun possession
• Read also: Hunter Biden, son of US president, guilty of illegal possession of firearm
“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 about 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 having sex to “humiliate, harass, harm and tarnish his reputation,” according to the complaint, dated Sunday and filed in a New York civil court with a view to a lawsuit seeking damages.
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 pornographic disclosure, unjust enrichment and moral damage, Fox News said Monday that “this legal action, entirely motivated by political considerations, is without any foundation.”
The Murdoch group’s channel claims 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Biden had never complained before sending a formal notice at the end of April 2024 and that the series had then been withdrawn, “as a precaution”.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 illegal possession of a firearm in a federal trial that has brought back to light his years of addiction to alcohol, cocaine and crack.
He is due to appear in court again 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 the false thesis, dear to Donald Trump, of a rigged presidential election in 2020 in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.
In 2023, it had to pay a staggering $787.5 million to electronic voting machine manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems, at the center of this false theory, to avoid a trial.
