Hunter Biden’s Lawyers Put Fox News on Notice, Demand Retractions and an Apology – Or Risk a Defamation Lawsuit
Lawyers for Hunter Biden are demanding Fox News issue corrections about some of its coverage of the president’s son or risk a defamation lawsuit, according to the Washington Post.
The attorneys also fired off threatening letters to others, including Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani.
Biden has been the subject of unyielding coverage in conservative media after he reportedly left his now-infamous laptop in a Delaware repair store and failed to retrieve it in 2019.
A repairman, John Paul Mac Isaac, rummaged through the computer and made copies of the hard drive, which contains information about Biden’s business dealings, as well as salacious photos and videos of Biden seemingly engaging in illegal activity. Mac Isaac sent a copy to Giuliani, who worked to make it public.
The Post reported:
Abbe Lowell, a recently hired lawyer whom Biden enlisted about a month ago, sent lengthy letters to the Justice Department and Delaware’s attorney general requesting investigations into several key players who were involved in disseminating data from a laptop that Biden is said to have dropped off at a repair shop in Wilmington, Del.
Bryan M. Sullivan, another lawyer now representing Biden, sent a separate communication to [Tucker] Carlson and Fox News demanding that they correct falsehoods from his recent show or risk a possible defamation lawsuit.
And in another letter, Lowell wrote to the Internal Revenue Service challenging the nonprofit status of Marco Polo, a group that is run by conservative activist Garrett M. Ziegler. Lowell provided 36 pages as evidence that the group is engaging in political activity in violation of its nonprofit status.
According to a source familiar with the legal strategy, Biden has had enough of coverage he finds inaccurate.
“He is not going to sit quietly by as questionable characters continue to violate his rights and media organizations peddling in lies try to defame him,” the person told the Post.
Biden’s attorneys allege Fox News defamed him when Tucker Carlson claimed Biden funneled $50,000 to his father, Joe Biden. In reality, the younger Biden was paying $49,910 for office space in Washington, D.C. every three months.
“We demand that you immediately retract these statements by spending a significant of amount of air-time on such retraction,” Sullivan said in the letter to Fox News and Carlson. “If we do not receive this written confirmation, we will assume that you both are not interested in acting responsibly and professionally and willing to reverse its actual malice reporting,”
The Post stated Biden is seeking apologies from other Fox News commentators, including Sean Hannity.
As for Mac Isaac, an attorney for Biden sent a criminal referral for the repairman to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
“Backing up Mr. Biden’s files for any repair did not require Mr. Mac Isaac to review the contents of any such files,” a lawyer for Biden wrote. “Mr. Biden did not consent to Mr. Mac Isaac gaining access to the content of those files in April 2019 or at any other time.”
