During a week when we're seeing headlines about a political candidate throwing a tarantula at a woman, I suppose nothing should really surprise us. But I swear I never saw this one coming. Hunter Biden bringing a lawsuit against someone? Sure... it's not really shocking at all. Hunter Biden bringing a lawsuit against Fox News? That's also a pretty easy call. They haven't actually been big fans of his. But Hunter Biden suing Fox News accusing them of publishing... revenge porn about him? Nobody had that on their bingo card, I'm fairly sure. And yet here we are. The suit has been filed. It's based on a six-part miniseries that was published on Fox Nation in 2022 called The Trial of Hunter Biden. It included embarrassing pictures of Hunter found on his infamous laptop and he claims that this qualifies as revenge porn and Fox must compensate him. (Bloomberg)

Hunter Biden sued Fox News for streaming a miniseries that he claims included “intimate images” of him without his consent, violating a New York “revenge porn” law.

The president’s son filed his lawsuit Sunday in New York state court, with Fox News moving it to federal court on Monday. The complaint focuses on 2022’s The Trial of Hunter Biden, a six-part “mock trial” that was streamed on the Fox Nation site.

Biden says in his suit that the series was fiction, not news, and exploited his name, image and likeness for Fox News’ commercial benefit. But though the trial was fictional, Biden claims that the “evidence” presented included real images of him in the nude and engaging in sex acts.

“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,” Biden said in his suit.

Attempting to bring a lawsuit against a news network over a production that was released a couple of years ago seems a bit spurious to begin with. And Fox's use of the laptop images doesn't seem to fit into the definition of "revenge porn" as it was set forth in New York law. And finally, the idea that someone could come along at this point and "tarnish Hunter's reputation" beyond what he's done to it himself seems laughable.

But with all of that said, having read through the related material, I'm not 100% sure that Hunter might not have a case here. He's making a couple of points that a court could potentially find valid. As far as the sordid images go, Fox News has been running them since they were first uncovered. Hunter is a public figure and he abandoned his laptop and his pictures made their way into the public square. Fox News had every right to include them as part of their investigation into the laptop and the shady activities of Hunter and The Big Guy.

But Fox Nation is another question. It's been a couple of years since I watched that miniseries, but that show was not exactly what you would define as "news." It was certainly based on news, but it was still a work of fiction. They depicted a situation where Hunter would be put on trial for foreign corruption allegations he is suspected of, but such a trial never took place. Biden is characterizing the series as "entertainment" and not protected news coverage. He's also seeking reimbursement because Fox engaged in "self-enrichment" through the use of his images. 

While it pains me to say it, he's not entirely wrong. Fox Nation does run a subscription service and nonsubscribers may encounter advertisements, so they do make money off of it. Almost all of Fox Nation's content that I have viewed over the years seems to have been created to inform people on a variety of topics. But does that meet the bar of qualifying as protected "news coverage" if they are presenting it in the form of a fictional drama that is based on the news and includes unproven allegations and speculation? I'm not entirely sure, but a court certainly might agree that it does not meet that bar.

There is also the fact that Hunter's attorneys informed Fox News in April that they would be bringing this suit. In response, Fox Nation removed the miniseries from its site after it had been up there for almost two years. Granted, that doesn't prove anything, but it looks rather suspicious and could be seen as an admission of there being a problem. Fox said they did it out of "an abundance of caution."

And then there is the question of "revenge porn." That's the New York law that Hunter is suing Fox under. The law is unhelpfully vague, declaring it unlawful to "disclose an intimate image of another person with the intent to cause harm." It was clearly a reference to images willingly shared by people who were presumably in a relationship of some sort and were later published by a disgruntled ex or one who threatened to publish them unless extortion of some sort was paid. But the law isn't clear about that at all and it could conceivably be applied to any intimate images. And as gross as they tended to be, the laptop pictures of Hunter Biden clearly could be considered "pornographic" in some sense. As I said, I honestly don't know. It sounds ridiculous at first glance, but Hunter Biden might actually have a case to make here.