A federal judge awarded Hunter Biden $1.7 million Wednesday in his defamation lawsuit against former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne over comments Byrne made in 2023.
Biden sued Byrne, a staunch Trump ally who has repeatedly promoted Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, over his claims that Biden reached out to the Iranian government in 2021 offering to have his father, President Joe Biden, “unfreeze” $8 billion in Iranian funds in exchange for a bribe.
U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson, a California-based judge who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, issued his ruling on Friday and formally entered the judgment Wednesday.
Wilson wrote that the court “found that ample evidence supported a finding that Defendant knew the story to be false” yet continued to make the same claims publicly while court proceedings were underway.
“This was not a product of excusable neglect but rather of coordinated strategy,” Wilson wrote, adding that Byrne relied on sources that were “unreliable or biased” against Biden and that Byrne was “motivated to defame” Biden because of “hostility and anger toward” Biden and his family.
“Overall, in the totality of circumstances, by far the most plausible explanation is that Defendant is not credible, fabricates awesome and farfetched narratives to garner attention in the media, and fabricated the defamatory story at issue in this case to damage Plaintiff’s reputation,” Wilson wrote.
Biden, who received a presidential pardon from his father in 2024, has celebrated Wilson’s ruling in several posts on X.
“His lies caused real damage and endangered my family,” Biden wrote Tuesday. “The court determined that everything he said about me was a complete fiction.”
Wilson wrote in his ruling that Byrne failed to appear before a jury trial and missed several scheduled court appearances. Byrne also fired his attorney, further delaying proceedings, Wilson wrote.
Byrne could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
He resigned as CEO of Overstock in 2019 after he made controversial comments about his role in the “deep state” and said he was involved in investigations related to allegations of interference in the 2016 election.
