Fox News is confirming that the miniseries The Trial of Hunter Biden has been pulled from its streaming service, Fox Nation. The removal of the “mock trial” series follows reports that the son of President Joe Biden plans to “imminently” file a lawsuit against the network alleging defamation.
“This program was produced in and has been available since 2022,” a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement provided to TVNewser. “We are reviewing the concerns that have just been raised and—out of an abundance of caution in the interim—have taken it down.” A video promoting the series to viewers has also been removed from Fox platforms.
Originally released in October 2022, The Trial of Hunter Biden imagined how the various accusations of financial impropriety that have been leveled against the younger Biden might have played out in court. Judge Joe Brown—ex-host of the eponymous daytime court show—was the presiding justice over the miniseries’ mock trial, which reportedly included sexually explicit images of Biden with different women.
According to ABC News, those images were characterized as “revenge porn” in an April 23 letter written by Biden’s lawyers. “[The Trial of Hunter Biden] unlawfully published and continues to publish intimate images of Mr. Biden depicting him in the nude as well as engaged in sex acts in violation of the majority of states’ laws against the nonconsensual disclosure of sexually explicit images and videos,” his attorneys stated, demanding that the series be removed from Fox Nation.
The full scope of Biden’s allegations against Fox extends well beyond one miniseries. Elsewhere in the April 23 letter, his legal team accused the network of “conspiracy and subsequent actions to defame Mr. Biden and paint him in a false light, the unlicensed commercial exploitation of his image, name, and likeness, and the unlawful publication of hacked intimate images of him.”
“Hunter Biden’s lawyers have belatedly chosen to publicly attack Fox News’ constitutionally protected coverage regarding their client,” a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement provided to TVNewser responding to those claims.
“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,” the statement continued “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.”