President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, sued Fox News on Sunday, arguing that a mini-series produced by the company broke the law by sharing explicit photos and videos of him without his permission.
The program, “The Trial of Hunter Biden,” which first appeared in 2022 on Fox Nation, the network’s streaming service, presented a dramatized version of a criminal trial of Mr. Biden, with fictional charges. The mini-series integrated real-life images of Mr. Biden in the nude and engaged in sex acts, imagery that was discovered on a laptop that Mr. Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop in Delaware.
The lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan, accuses Fox of violating a so-called “revenge porn” law in New York State that was passed in 2019. The law allows people to sue anyone who shares their sexually explicit photos and videos without permission.
“Fox published and disseminated these intimate images to its vast audience of millions as part of an entertainment program in order to humiliate, harass, annoy, and alarm Mr. Biden and to tarnish his reputation,” the lawsuit states.
In a statement on Monday, a Fox News spokeswoman called Mr. Biden’s lawsuit “entirely politically motivated” and “devoid of merit.”
“Hunter Biden is a public figure who has been the subject of multiple investigations and is now a convicted felon,” the spokeswoman said. “Consistent with the First Amendment, Fox News has accurately covered the newsworthy events of Mr. Biden’s own making, and we look forward to vindicating our rights in court.”
Fox removed “The Trial of Hunter Biden” from Fox Nation in April, a day after Mr. Biden’s lawyers sent a letter to the network demanding that the mini-series be taken down.
“The core complaint stems from a 2022 streaming program that Mr. Biden did not complain about until sending a letter in late April 2024,” the Fox spokeswoman said on Monday, adding that the network removed the program “in an abundance of caution.”
Last month, Mr. Biden was found guilty on three felony counts related to buying a firearm. He is set to go on trial later this year on charges of tax evasion. The Fox mini-series depicted Mr. Biden as standing trial for charges of bribery and acting as a foreign agent, but the authorities have never brought those charges against him.
A representative for Mr. Biden’s law firm declined to comment on Monday beyond the complaint. The lawsuit requests compensatory and punitive damages and an order requiring that Fox remove any copies of the explicit images of Mr. Biden from its platforms.
Last year, Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, which accused the network of promoting baseless claims about election fraud that flipped votes to Joseph R. Biden in the 2020 presidential election.