A federal judge said the former CEO of Overstock.com knew his claims that Hunter Biden had demanded $800 million in bribes from Iran were fabricated.
LOS ANGELES (CN) – A federal judge in California on Friday CLUE Hunter Biden $1.7 million in damages in his defamation dispute against former Overstock.com CEO and 2020 election denier Patrick Byrne.
US District Judge Stephen Wilson already had TOLD At a hearing in January, Byrne faced damages after failing to defend himself against claims by former President Joe Biden’s son. Byrne had alleged that Biden had demanded $800 million in bribes from Iran sometime in 2021.
“Here, the evidence is clear and convincing that the defendant engaged in willful misrepresentation with willful disregard for the rights of the plaintiff,” Wilson said. “Defendant’s defamation went far beyond mere negligence. In fact, Defendant has admitted that after the offending article was published, Defendant repeatedly reposted the article across social media platforms and encouraged his followers on those platforms to promote it further.”
The judge, a Ronald Reagan appointee, also cited Byrne’s ongoing delay tactics during the trial, including going off the rails a scheduled trial last July in downtown Los Angeles by firing his legal team on the first day of the trial and failing to appear in person after his then-lawyer had promised the judge he would.
“Defendant has maintained a campaign of protracted tactics that have indefinitely prolonged this lengthy litigation, denying Plaintiff his day in court,” Wilson wrote. “This was not the product of reasonable negligence, but of a coordinated strategy.”
The judge awarded Biden the $1 in nominal damages he had sought and ordered Byrne to pay the $34,969.20 in court-ordered sanctions he already owed within 14 days. The penalties will increase by $1,000 for each day Byrne fails to pay them after the 14-day period.
“This is a complete vindication of Hunter Biden against the false statements made about him by Patrick Byrne,” said Bryan Sullivan, an attorney with Early Sullivan Wright Gizer and McRae LLP, who has represented Biden in the case. “As the court found, Byrne had no basis to say that Hunter had any involvement with Iran.”
The last attorney who unsuccessfully sought to appear in the case on Byrne’s behalf did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Byrne, 63, stepped down as CEO of Overstock.com in 2019 after a reported affair with convicted Russian spy Maria Butina. He later became involved in efforts to challenge the legitimacy of President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.
Byrne, no stranger to conspiracy theories, has repeatedly claimed that the younger Biden tried to take an $800 million bribe from Iran in exchange for his father’s administration releasing $8 billion in Iranian funds frozen in South Korea and for the U.S. to “go easy” on negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
“These defamatory statements by Byrne are not just false and not just malicious — they are downright outrageous,” Biden said in his complaint. “Byrne knows his statements are baseless and yet published and republished them anyway, and he continues to spread his lies to anyone who will listen, including his hundreds of thousands of social media followers.”
Last July, when the jury trial was about to begin, Byrne avoided his failure to appear in person in court in downtown LA. Instead, Byrne fired his lawyers and had a new defense team appear for the first time.
Wilson refused to allow Byrne’s new team of lawyers to join the case, noting that the lead attorney, Michigan-based Stephanie Lambert, had been disqualified last year for violating federal court orders in a Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit against Byrne.
The judge, while calling Byrne’s tactics a “three-ring circus,” declined to order him in absentia at the time and rescheduled the trial for October 2025. He also gave the Biden team another opportunity to call Byrne on his finances, which they had intended to do at trial based on assurances from Byrne’s exes that he would test Byrne’s exes.
Because public policy requires judgments to be decided on the merits, a nonpayment sanction would be too severe for misconduct alone, Wilson said last summer.
However, at a hearing last October on Biden’s request for financial sanctions against Byrne for his failure to appear, again no attorney appeared for Byrne.
At that point, Wilson told Biden’s lawyers that he would grant their request for sanctions and order Byrne in absentia for his refusal to obey court orders.
Biden was seeking $1 in nominal damages for his “defamation per se” claim, which does not require proof of emotional or reputational harm from Byrne’s allegations. However, he also sought damages, citing what he says is Byrne’s malice in spreading a false bribery story.
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