Left: Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com and an ally of former President Donald Trump, takes a break from being questioned by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks, in Washington, Friday, July 15, 2022 (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite). Right: FILE — Hunter Biden departs from federal court June 11, 2024, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum).
A certain level of mystery has been injected into a long-running lawsuit between former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne and Hunter Biden in a flurry of back-and-forth motions filed on Friday. Still, the animus in the case is clear.
The precise nature of the latest legal dispute is necessarily being kept under wraps because of how the motions practice occurred.
Attorneys for the presidential son filed an ex parte motion “for an Order Granting Sanctions Against Defendant and/or an Adverse Inference Instruction” under seal along with 26 exhibits.
The businessman’s attorney quickly fired back to protest the request and the approach taken by the plaintiff in an opposition motion.
Filing a motion ex parte is a way for a litigant to quickly get a request or information before a court without giving the other party notice — and without providing the other side their concomitant opportunity to oppose whatever is being requested of, or shown to, the court.
In other words, ex-parte requests are typically viewed as aggressive.
“Defendant Patrick Byrne, by and through his attorneys of record, hereby objects to and opposes Plaintiff’s ex parte application,” the defendant’s response — originally filed under seal as well — reads. “Plaintiff’s Ex Parte application is factually and legally baseless.”
While Biden’s team filed the sanctions request under seal, the docket shows the motion references a stipulated protective order agreed upon by both sides in August as well as a rejected request for an additional protective order filed by the defendant in early November.
The rejected request had to do with deposition-related travel — but the minutes of the court hearing describing how the issue was discussed and decided are largely redacted. The record is clear, however, that Byrne aimed to limit his travel and asked the court to bless that effort.
Now, Biden’s team appears frustrated with something related to the knock-on effects of both the protective order that was granted and/or the deposition-travel-related request that was denied. So, they are asking for sanctions and for the court to issue an adverse inference that can be used against Byrne during trial.
This request, while again mysterious, would almost seem to suggest that Biden believes Byrne or his attorney have violated some kind of rule in one of the orders, or a local court rule, or similar.
Byrne’s team rubbishes the latest dustup as a bout of brinkmanship that is, itself, in violation of the court rules.
“Plaintiff’s Ex Parte Application violates the court’s Civility and Professional Rule A4 in that the Ex Parte Application is being brought to harass the Defendant and his counsel and is being used as a bad faith litigation tactic to disrupt the work Defendant and his counsel are trying to do to timely comply with the court’s pretrial order deadlines,” the opposition motion reads.
The filing goes on to outline several additional rules and orders allegedly violated by the ex parte request and says Biden’s effort amounts to “unprofessional and unwarranted hostility towards the Defendant.”
“Plaintiff’s Ex Parte Application is also baseless because there is no good cause for the court to grant it because there is no emergency, and Plaintiff will not suffer irreparable injury if the court does not grant it,” Byrne’s motion continues.
Earlier this week, Byrne’s attorney filed a declaration complaining that Biden’s legal team gave the defense some “543 pages of documents” that were not previously disclosed, not on a list of proposed trial exhibits, and, in deadline terms, “past the discovery cut off.”
Biden’s attorneys, in response, said Byrne’s attorney got it wrong — and protests far too much about the documents themselves.
In the underlying lawsuit, Biden claims Byrne defamed him during a June 2023 interview — and then again in October 2023.
Biden says Byrne made false claims that he and his family solicited bribes from the Islamic Republic of Iran in exchange for the Biden administration releasing billions of frozen Iranian funds and for adopting a pro-Iranian position during “nuclear talks.”
Trial in the matter is slated to begin on Dec. 10.
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