It is legally impossible to defame Hunter Biden. His reputation is so bad and toxic that he has no good name to damage. He managed to sully it all on his own. It cannot be tarnished or soiled further. As a result, the president’s infamous son is, essentially, slander-proof.
This fundamental fact of law renders his recent threats to sue Fox News and others for defamation utterly futile. His lawyers surely know this, which leaves only one other motive for their lame ultimatums: a concerted effort to intimidate their client’s critics into silence. It won’t work. There is simply too much evidence of spectacular wrongdoing by the president’s licentious son.
Most of the allegations publicly leveled against Hunter appear to be substantially true. He’s a con man extraordinaire and a crook. This belief is supported by emails, photographs, text messages, witness statements, banking transactions, and other documentary evidence. His laptop alone contains a trove of damning information about illicit schemes to sell access and promises of influence involving his powerful father. Our country’s adversaries were his treasured clients. Like the idiot he is, Hunter recorded hundreds of gigabytes of self-incrimination. It was an act of hubris and immolation. Freud would have a field day.
Hunter Biden can pretend he’s a victim, but the law emphatically says he is not. He’s the villain.
It is well established that federal prosecutors have been investigating Biden and could charge him with tax crimes, money-laundering, false statements, and other assorted offenses. Hard evidence suggests that his foreign business dealings with China, Russia, and Ukraine netted him tens of millions of dollars and stoked legitimate suspicions of corrupt influence peddling the likes of which no one has ever seen on such scale. Hunter’s own biography is a sordid confessional of illegal drug abuse, prostitutes, strip clubs, and infidelity. He demanded that his female employees FaceTime him in naked poses and perform sex acts to gain their paychecks. The ugly scandal that has consumed him is of his own making.
Hunter has denied any lawlessness by boasting, “I’m absolutely certain, 100 percent certain, that at the end of the investigation, I will be cleared of any wrongdoing.” His confidence is fueled by the knowledge that his father’s Department of Justice is overseeing the probe to nowhere. Daddy’s attorney general, the unprincipled Merrick Garland, refuses to recuse himself despite the glaring and disqualifying conflict of interest. How else does one explain an investigation that has now entered its fifth year without any criminal charges? The fix is in.
Hunter’s newly assembled lawyers —devoid of conscience and ethics— have adopted a strategic principle of war that “the best defense is a good offense.” But their twisted approach is deeply flawed. In a letter to primetime host Tucker Carlson, the attorneys cherry-picked a single alleged falsehood in their demand for a retraction under the threat of a defamation lawsuit. It’s absurd. The cited falsity was Hunter’s, not Carlson’s.
In a signed rental application in 2018, Biden listed his address printed on his driver’s license as his father’s house in Wilmington, Delaware. On the same form, Hunter identified the “monthly rent” as an eye-popping $49,910 for his “current residence.” Carlson asked the logical, if not obvious, question of where such exorbitant sums of money came from. “Who is paying and how much are they paying him, and why were they paying him,” he wondered aloud. These are eminently reasonable questions.
Biased fact-checkers contend that the rent was actually for an office suite in Georgetown on a quarterly, not monthly, basis. Okay. Assuming this is accurate, can a member of the media be blamed for relying on the written application that Hunter erroneously executed? Hardly. This means Carlson owes no retraction because his commentary was not knowingly false as the law requires.
Moreover, opinion is protected speech under the First Amendment. The Fox host’s popular nightly program is clearly opinion-driven and everyone knows it.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I have appeared a few times on Carlson’s program in years past. Far more frequently, I am a guest on “Hannity” during the hour that follows. Biden’s lawyers have leveled similar defamation claims against Sean Hannity. These, too, are without merit.
As a public figure, Hunter Biden would have to prove what is known as “actual malice” to prevail in any slander case. That is, the speaker uttered a false statement purporting to be fact with knowledge that it was false or in reckless disregard of the truth. Accepting Hunter’s application statements at face value does not give rise to liability. Hence, under no construction of the law were the statements remotely defamatory.
The newly launched Hunter offensive has already produced a boomerang. Joe Biden shamelessly dismissed the notorious laptop as Russian disinformation during the 2020 presidential debates. He knew it wasn’t. His son promoted the same canard in several interviews, brazenly stating that it might not be his. Suddenly, his lawyers now admit that the device is, indeed, the genuine article and belongs to their client. This makes father and son look like inveterate liars for the last two years.
Hunter’s legally frivolous attack against Fox News is trivial compared to his lawyers’ threats aimed at John Paul Mac Isaac, the Delaware computer repairmen who discovered its smoking-gun contents. They accuse him of theft, invading the device without permission, and illegally disseminating the information. Seriously?
Any half-competent lawyer knows that these are ludicrous arguments meant to frighten and malign Isaac. Hunter waived any right to privacy by giving consent to access the files in order to retrieve all data that might have been lost in the water-damaged computer. He then abandoned the laptop for months and ignored requests to retrieve it.
Under the law, Isaac was granted constructive custody and control, if not ownership of the deserted laptop. This is consistent with the “terms of policy” that Hunter agreed to in writing. Alarmed by what he saw, Isaac then handed it over to the FBI when he determined that it contained potential evidence of crimes. Demanding that he be investigated by state and federal authorities for imaginary crimes is vindictive and contemptible.
Hunter Biden can pretend he’s a victim, but the law emphatically says he is not. He’s the villain. His punitive legal maneuvers are a disgraceful attempt to shift blame for his own wrongful actions. It is regrettable that his lawyers would partner in such noxious endeavors by turning a blind eye to the law.
But it proves the old proverb, “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”