Judge awards Hunter Biden $1.7 million in defamation suit against former Overstock CEO

Hunter BidenJudge awards Hunter Biden $1.7 million in defamation suit against former Overstock CEOThe judge wrote that Patrick Byrne’s comments about President Joe Biden’s son were “not a product of excusable neglect but rather of coordinated strategy.”Listen to this article with a free profile00:0000:00Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne; Hunter Biden.Getty ImagesShareAdd NBC News to GoogleJuly 15, 2026, 7:51 PM EDTBy Kyla Guilfoil and Gary GrumbachA 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.Subscribe to read this story ad-freeGet unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.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 has ce...