Fox News is defending its persistent Hunter Biden coverage after his attorneys threatened to sue the network for defamation and other matters.
Hunter Biden’s legal team wrote a letter to Fox News last week warning the network it would be filing a lawsuit “imminently.”
“Hunter Biden’s lawyers have belatedly chosen to publicly attack Fox News’ constitutionally protected coverage regarding their client,” Fox News said in a statement to National Review.
“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 U.S. Attorney’s Offices in California and Delaware, and has admitted to multiple incidents of wrongdoing,” the statement continues, referring to Hunter Biden’s various legal troubles and the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
“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.”
Law firm Geragos & Geragos wrote a letter to the network last week threatening a lawsuit for defamation, exploitation of his image, and publicizing hacked photographs.
“While routinely defaming and disparaging Mr. Biden, FOX has simultaneously sought to profit by the unlawful exploitation of Mr. Biden’s image, name, and likeness for commercial purposes and reprehensible dissemination of salacious photographs depicting Mr. Biden,” wrote Tina Glandian, a partner at the law firm.
The letter was the second one sent by Geragos & Geragos over the past few weeks, NBC News reported. Fox News initially asked for more time to respond to the first letter. The pending lawsuit is part of Hunter Biden’s aggressive legal strategy marked by civil lawsuits against his political opponents.
Hunter Biden’s high-profile defense attorney Abbe D. Lowell is not handling the situation because of a legal conflict, Axios reported. Lowell has suggested Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop archive was manipulated without providing evidence to back up those assertions.
The laptop archive and Biden’s iCloud server both contain a trove of photos depicting Biden’s escapades with illicit drugs and prostitutes. The photos have circulated widely online and in the media since the New York Post first reported on the laptop archive ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Federal investigators verified the contents of the Apple iCloud server and the laptop archive in late 2019, according to special counsel David Weiss’ legal team and IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, an IRS agent with years of experience on the Hunter Biden case.
Weiss is simultaneously prosecuting Hunter Biden in Delaware on three federal gun charges and in California for nine federal tax charges. Biden pleaded not guilty to all the charges and both cases are expected to go to trial this summer.
Former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov is also being prosecuted by Weiss for allegedly making false accusations to the FBI claiming Joe and Hunter Biden took bribes from Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky. Smirnov was a longtime FBI informant whose bribery claims were memorialized in an FBI document made public in July 2023, three years after the fact.
Lawyers for Hunter Biden have demanded Fox News attach an editor’s note to its stories about Smirnov’s allegations. The Biden administration made similar demands shortly after Smirnov was indicted in February and linked to Russian intelligence. Smirnov pleaded not guilty to the charges and his trial is set to take place later this year.
Zlochevsky founded Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, a company that paid Hunter Biden roughly $1 million per year from spring 2014 until the end of Joe Biden’s vice presidency, bank records show. Burisma significantly reduced Hunter Biden’s salary when his father left office, according to his federal tax indictment. Prior to his employment at Burisma, Biden had no experience in Ukrainian affairs or the energy sector.
House Republicans have investigated Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings and President Joe Biden’s apparent role in them during and after his vice presidency. Hunter Biden’s position with Burisma and Chinese business dealings are at the core of the impeachment inquiry.
In February, Hunter Biden testified for the impeachment inquiry and repeatedly said his father had no involvement in his foreign business dealings. But, Hunter Biden admitted his father met and spoke to his foreign business associates over the course of his business dealings.
He cited the Smirnov indictment as evidence the impeachment inquiry was baseless, while his lawyers claimed in court the Smirnov situation cast doubt on Weiss’s credibility, a contradiction noted by Weiss’s team of prosecutors.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers have attempted unsuccessfully to get the charges against him dismissed based on a variety of legal arguments. Most notably, his attorneys have claimed Hunter Biden is the victim of selective prosecution by his father’s Justice Department.