Hunter Biden was compelled to withdraw his lawsuit against Fox News, which he claimed had breached the law by airing sexually explicit images of him in a six-part mock trial series entitled “The Trial of Hunter Biden.”
This marks the second occasion on which Hunter has retracted his case against Fox News. He initially threatened legal action against the network in April 2024, which led Fox Nation to remove the miniseries from its streaming platform.
Subsequently, Hunter Biden filed a lawsuit against Fox in July, only to retract it a few weeks later. In October, he submitted another complaint, which he officially dismissed on Friday.
“We are pleased to move on now that Hunter Biden has finally voluntarily withdrawn this meritless case, which proved to be nothing more than a politically motivated stunt,” Fox News stated to Mediaite.
Hunter Biden’s initial lawsuit asserted that Fox News violated New York Civil Rights Law Sec 52-b, which pertains to so-called revenge porn.
The show premiered in late October 2022 and was promoted as a preview of what a potential Hunter Biden trial might resemble.
Hunter’s legal representatives did not clarify the reasons for dismissing the lawsuit, which they cannot refile; however, they recently lost a motion to transfer it from federal court to New York state.
“Rather than reporting on a newsworthy event, Fox aimed to exploit Mr. Biden’s persona through a form of treatment that is distinct from the dissemination of news or information. In fact, the entire miniseries is fictionalized and based on a nonexistent criminal case,” Hunter Biden claimed in his court filing last July.
Fox News responded to the filing in a statement to Mediaite at that time, asserting, “This entirely politically motivated lawsuit is devoid of merit. The core complaint arises from a 2022 streaming program that Mr. Biden did not raise concerns about until he sent a letter in late April 2024. The program was removed within days of the letter, out of an abundance of caution, but Hunter Biden is a public figure who has been the subject of multiple investigations.
Fox also provided an explanation to Mediaite regarding the removal of the “mock trial” series from its streaming platform: “This program was produced in and has been available since 2022. We are currently reviewing the concerns that have recently been raised and — out of an abundance of caution in the interim — have decided to take it down.”
Hunter Biden has faced significant challenges this year following the departure of his father, former President Joe Biden, from office.
Last month, Hunter Biden petitioned a federal judge to dismiss his lawsuit against a former aide to Trump, which pertains to the disclosure of information from a laptop believed to belong to the son of the former President.
Hunter Biden indicated that his limited financial resources hinder his ability to pursue the case.
In documents submitted to a federal court in California, Biden’s legal team requested U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera to dismiss the 2023 lawsuit against Garrett Ziegler.
They asserted that Biden’s income “has dropped significantly” and that he is burdened with substantial debts (amounting to millions of dollars).
Biden’s attorneys noted that the wildfires in the Pacific Palisades exacerbated his financial difficulties, rendering his rental residence “unlivable for an extended period of time.”
Ziegler, along with the company he founded, Marco Polo, was sued by Biden in September 2023. Biden alleged that they violated state and federal laws by attempting to establish a searchable online database containing 128,000 emails purportedly from him.
Ziegler, who served as an assistant to Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro from February 2019 to January 2021, had requested the presiding judge to dismiss the case, but the judge had already rejected that request.
Biden was convicted on federal gun charges and in a federal tax case.
President Biden granted him a pardon prior to his scheduled sentencing in December for the gun charges.
