Overstock Loon Patrick Byrne Loses To Himself In Court, Must Pay Hunter Biden
RIP to a real one
On Friday, a federal judge ordered MAGA weirdo Patrick Byrne to pay Hunter Biden $1.7 million in punitive damages, ending a deranged carnival of chaotic lawyering that lasted almost three years.
The defamatory statement was relatively tame, at least when compared to some of the crazy shit people have said about the former president’s son. In an exclusive interview in 2023 with Capitol Times Magazine — a publication no one has ever heard of or read but which you can buy for just $10.99 per month — Byrne said he was recruited by the Iranian government for a top secret mission.
Why the Iranians would approach the former CEO of Overstock.com was left unsaid, but apparently this kind of thing happens a lot. Byrne also claims to have been approached by Venezuelan interests and to have been recruited by the FBI to set up a foreign bribe for Hillary Clinton.
In the course of this particularly mission, dubbed “League of Shadows,” Byrne discovered that Hunter Biden was soliciting an $800 million bribe from Iran tied to his father’s negotiations with the regime — or so Byrne told the Capitol Times.
In November of 2023, Biden sued Byrne for defamation in the Central District of California.
Now, in a normal lawsuit, Byrne’s lawyer would have argued that, when the entire world has seen the complainant blasted out of his mind cavorting with sex workers, he’s more or less un-defame-able. But Byrne’s lawyer, Michael Murphy, never got to make that argument, because Byrne fired him an hour before the trial was supposed to start on July 29, 2025.
This can’t have been an enormous shock to Murphy, who was at least the fourth lawyer on the case. (In court documents, Byrne claimed he feared sabotage when Murphy’s associate showed up with a Free Palestine pin and cat hair on her suit.) But it was a pretty big shock to Judge Stephen Wilson, an 85-year-old Reagan appointee, who gaveled in the case to find three rando lawyers seated at the defense table. None of those lawyers was Peter Ticktin, Donald Trump’s former boarding school roommate, who got famous defending MAGA D-listers and pro hac-ed into this case. In his stead stood Stefanie Lambert, an election-denying lawyer who managed to get herself un-admitted from a case in DC after leaking protected discovery material, but not before getting herself arrested in the courtroom on an outstanding warrant from her home state of Michigan. (Liberty dropped similar suits against Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Mike Lindell, but can’t get out of Byrne’s thanks to Lambert and Ticktin’s antics.)
After sputtering in astonishment at the “three-ring circus” occupying his courtroom, Judge Wilson decided that he wasn’t going to accept Lambert’s pro hac application, and he revoked Ticktin’s for failure to appear. At which point Byrne fired the other two lawyers and essentially refused to participate in the case at all.
Rather than default him immediately, Wilson continued the case to October, reopened discovery into Byrne’s finances, and ordered Byrne to hire another lawyer. Byrne ignored all three instructions, then disregarded multiple orders that he personally appear in the courtroom. Instead, he went on Alex Jones’s show and repeated the lies about Biden and Iran, playing a voicemail recording he had personally designated “HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL” under the case’s own protective order. Jones’s account promoted the clip with a caption crowning Byrne a “CIA Whistleblower.”
In January, with a hearing on the default judgment already underway, a lawyer named Robert Tyler, materialized to request a “limited appearance” on Byrne’s behalf — filed that same morning, with no explanation for where Tyler had been for the preceding five months.
“This is another last-minute ploy, and, frankly, at this point in the proceedings, I find Mr. Byrne totally incredible and not believable,” the judge scoffed.
Eventually Tyler managed to enter an un-limited appearance and filed motions to get his client un-defaulted, enlisting the help of (yet another) Florida lawyer. But by then it was far too late.
Judge Wilson awarded Biden $1 in nominal compensatory damages plus $1.7 million in punitive damages — an amount calculated to be high enough to get Byrne to finally shut up about Hunter Biden. (I’ll take the under on that one.)
The court imposed $34,969 in sanctions for Byrne’s bad behavior, to be paid in 14 days, increasing by $1,000 every day after the deadline. (I’ll take the over on that one.)
Byrne's team says he intends to appeal. League of Shadows could not be reached for comment.
Well that was straightforward. I have screamed at by a judge. I was nearly impeached by a judge. I was told to shut up by a judge. I have a judge in my life who may be trying to destroy something, but never have I been involved with this kind of fun. I really haven't lived. What a fantastic story. He should have been awarded more for this nonsense.
It says something about our economy that lunatics like Byrne and Liddell can accumulate enough money to be worth suing. But what? That's the question.