Left inset: Patrick Byrne speaks during a panel discussion at the Nebraska Election Integrity Forum on Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Rebecca S. Gratz). Main: Hunter Biden sits for a wide-ranging interview on Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan in July 2025 (Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan/YouTube).
Former Overstock CEO and 2020 election conspiracy theorist Patrick Byrne asked a judge not to force him to pay Hunter Biden”s lawyers as a sanction for making everyone show up for a summertime defamation trial in California that never happened.
Claiming he was “unaware” of developments in the case after “acting prudently” in the “good cause” firings of his lawyers right before trial, Byrne asserted he didn’t willfully disobey a court order because he was never “given notice and an opportunity to be heard” on the sanctions issue. Instead, Byrne shifted the blame to Biden’s attorneys, stating they “pursued an aggressive litigation strategy” with a “flurry of filings” when he was a pro se defendant, and thus “he did not receive notice.”
The Monday request for U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson was the latest indication that Byrne is trying to bring the case back from the brink of a loss by default through attorney Robert Tyler, who once represented a former Trump White House policy analyst Biden sued over the posting of the “Laptop Report” online.
Former President Joe Biden’s son filed the defamation lawsuit in late 2023, claiming that Byrne defamed him when he falsely accused him of committing “despicable and treasonous crimes” involving bribery and Iran. Biden alleged that Byrne was “told that his allegations are false” and that a retraction demand was made, but Byrne instead “doubled down” in a subsequent post linking Hunter Biden and his “purported crimes” to the “horrific terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel.”
After Tyler entered an appearance on Byrne’s behalf in January, he moved to set aside a default judgment, going so far as to style his client as an “American whistleblower in its truest sense” who is prepared to tell a jury about “audio tapes” he “presented” to the FBI during the Biden administration “evidencing the veracity of his assertion Plaintiff Hunter Biden attempted to negotiate an illicit deal during President Bara[c]k Obama’s administration to unfreeze millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars.”
Now the attorney is asking Wilson to set aside the default before even addressing sanctions.
“[S]anctions are only to be awarded against a party who abuses the litigation process. Here, Mr. Byrne was acting prudently in terminating the services of his attorney, and consequently, should have been allowed to present his side on the issue of sanctions. Currently, a motion is pending before this Court as to whether an entry of default judgement should be set aside in light of the service of process issues that have plagued this case since July 30, 2025,” the filing said. “This Court should allow that motion to proceed first as it very well could be dispositive of this matter as due process and lack of notice lie at the heart of that motion as well.”
While it seemed to case was ready to go to trial in July, Byrne fired his lawyers Michael Murphy and Carmen Rosa Selame believing they were trying to “throw the fight” and tried to replace them with Stefanie Lambert and Peter Ticktin — neither of whom was licensed to practice in California and both of whom needed permission to appear pro hac vice.
Wilson, a Ronald Reagan appointee, opted to reschedule trial for October to give Byrne time to find new counsel rather than issuing a default judgment, but he ultimately refused to allow Lambert and Ticktin on the case.
Lambert — a Michigan lawyer who was indicted for allegedly trying to tamper with voting machines used in the 2020 election and who was previously disqualified from representing Byrne in a Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit for “relentless misconduct” — and Florida’s Ticktin — one of the attorneys sanctioned in Donald Trump’s failed RICO lawsuit against Hillary Clinton — unsuccessfully maintained that Byrne should be allowed to have his “counsel of choice” or else suffer “a severe violation of his constitutional rights.”
With the attorney void left unfilled, Biden’s lawyers filed a sanctions motion in late August, asking Wilson to put Byrne on the hook for $34,969.20 in hotel, flight, meal, and Uber ride costs that were all for naught given the “bad faith conduct” that made trial impossible. In September, Biden asked the judge to issue a bench warrant, force Byrne to show up to court, and make him comply with court orders. There would be no warrant, but sanctions for the derailing of the trial followed, and the clerk entered a default in October.
Byrne insists that Biden “has not established by clear and convincing evidence that [he] willfully disobeyed a specific order,” given that the defendant “effectively did not have an attorney of record in this case” when the sanctions motion was filed.
