Hunter Biden is pursing a different kind of cover-up.
Lawyers for the first son have demanded Fox News take down “intimate” photos of the disgraced middle-aged presidential offspring or face a lawsuit.
In a letter dated April 23 and made public Monday, attorneys for the scandal-scarred Hunter, 54, accused Fox of making “reprehensible” use of “salacious” and “hacked” photos.
The younger Biden’s legal team took particular issue with “The Trial of Hunter Biden,” a six-part series on the premium Fox Nation streaming service.
The series, which is formatted as a mock trial of the president’s son for charges including violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and bribery, features images taken from Hunter’s now-infamous laptop that show him nude and in compromising positions with an array of women, as well as doing drugs.
The latest letter, penned by attorney Tina Glandian of the prominent firm Geragos & Geragos, said the series “intentionally manipulates the facts” so that a viewer “cannot decipher” what’s true.
Since “The Trial of Hunter Biden” was “intended solely as entertainment and not as news” the use of the X-rated images and other photos was for the purpose of trade and advertising, and merely exploits Mr. Biden’s name, image, and likeness for Fox’s commercial benefit,” the lawyer alleges.
“Mr. Biden is the exclusive rights holder of the copyrighted material … including but not limited to … the intimate images … that have been published without authorization on Fox Nation’s ‘The Trial of Hunter Biden,'” Glandian wrote. “We hereby demand that FOX expeditiously remove and disable access to any and all intimate images of Mr. Biden from ‘The Trial of Hunter Biden'”.
The letter also accused the top-rated cable news outlet of improperly doubling down on claims by an indicted former FBI informant that Hunter Biden and his dad each accepted $5 million in bribes from Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings, in exchange for helping to remove Kyiv’s then-Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin from office and quashing his probe of Burisma in 2016.
The informant, Alexander Smirnov, was indicted in February by special counsel David Weiss on charges of lying to his FBI handler about meetings he had with a Burisma official that formed the basis of the allegations against Joe and Hunter Biden.
There is no record or evidence of either of the Bidens receiving any transfers in that amount from Zlochevsky.
Glandian’s letter says that “Fox initially remained silent” about the charges brought against Smirnov and then stood by the bribe claim, with on-air hosts Maria Bartiromo and Jesse Watters calling the indictment “an intimidation tactic” and “a smear job,” respectively.
“[G]iven that the bribery allegations have been confirmed to be false,” it reads, “we hereby demand that FOX take immediate steps to update its readers and viewers that the source of these allegations has been federally indicted for fabricating the allegations.”
A spokesperson for Fox News Media said its coverage of Hunter Biden is protected by the Constitutional right to free speech.
“Hunter Biden’s lawyers have belatedly chosen to publicly attack Fox News’ constitutionally protected coverage regarding their client,” the rep 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.”
“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,” the statement concluded.
Hunter Biden currently faces a criminal gun case in Delaware on charges of lying about his drug addiction when he submitted paperwork to purchase a firearm in 2018 and he faces a criminal tax case out of Los Angeles for allegedly evading $1.4 million in federal levies between 2016 and 2019.
The first son has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Fox News is a subsidiary of Fox Corporation. The executive chairman and CEO of Fox Corp., Lachlan Murdoch, is also the chair of News Corporation, the parent company of The Post.
