Hunter Biden's lawsuits and complaints against his critics

Lawsuits followed. In September 2023, he sued the IRS, alleging that its agents had illegally released his tax information and that the agency failed to protect his records, after two IRS agents testified to Congress about the investigation of him.^[1] In November he sued Byrne for defamation over claims that he had sought a bribe from Iran, filing the suit on the same day House Republicans subpoenaed him.^[2] In 2024 his lawyers threatened to sue Fox News over a six-part miniseries about his legal troubles, which Fox then removed from its streaming platform.^[10] He sued the network in July, accusing it of unlawfully publishing explicit images of him without his consent,^[3] then dropped the suit three weeks later without explaining why.^[6]

The cases ended in different ways. He abruptly dropped the IRS suit in May 2025, and the two IRS agents who had testified about his case said the move showed "everything you need to know."^[7] In July 2026, US District Judge Stephen Wilson issued a default judgment against Byrne, a ruling made without a trial because he had failed to defend the case and repeatedly defied court orders, awarding Hunter Biden $1.7 million in punitive damages and writing that Byrne's conduct was "not a product of excusable neglect but rather of coordinated strategy."^[8][11] His former lawyers then put a lien on the award.^[11] His lawsuits over his laptop, including those against Rudy Giuliani and the repair shop owner, are followed in the laptop arc.