Fox News Rushes to Do Damage Control After Hunter Biden Lawsuit

Fox News has quietly pulled The Trial of Hunter Biden, a six-part “mock trial” of Hunter Biden, from its digital streaming service, signaling that the company is taking the “imminently” arriving lawsuit announced by the president’s son more seriously than it had initially let on.

The scrub was first reported on Tuesday by the Daily Beast, just one day after Biden’s attorneys went public with a letter warning of forthcoming legal action due to the conservative media behemoth’s “relentless” attacks against him. Biden’s team accuses Fox of “conspiracy and subsequent actions to defame Mr. Biden and paint him in a false light.”

The letter also accused the network of knowing that nude images it circulated of Biden, allegedly taken from his laptop, were “hacked, stolen, and/or manipulated digital material” but continuing to publish them regardless, despite multiple state laws banning such acts under the umbrella of revenge porn.

In a statement issued Tuesday to CNN, Fox claimed that it had taken down the explicit miniseries simply out of “an abundance of caution” while it reviewed the letter. Still, handing Biden’s legal team exactly what they wanted is a far cry from the defiant counter statement shared by Fox just hours earlier that insisted the company had accurately covered relevant events pertaining to Biden, including investigations by the Department of Justice and Congress and indictments by U.S. attorney’s offices.

“Hunter Biden’s lawyers have belatedly chosen to publicly attack Fox News’ constitutionally protected coverage regarding their client,” a spokesperson for the network told The New Republic. “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.”