Tony Bobulinski, the former Hunter Biden business associate who became the House GOP’s “star witness” in its sputtering and largely evidence-free impeachment campaign against President Joe Biden, filed a $20 million defamation lawsuit against Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) on Monday.
Accusing the Maryland Democrat of “deliberately and maliciously besmirching the character” of Bobulinski, the latest complaint adds to a growing list of lawsuits filed by Bobulinski against Democrats and anti-Trump figures over allegations they’ve made about him and his impeachment testimony.
Much like previous suits he’s filed in recent weeks, Bobulinski first demanded a complete retraction and deletion of the alleged defamatory remarks before filing his multi-million dollar complaint. In this instance, Bobulinksi sent his demand letter to Raskin on April 10, claiming that the congressman neither responded nor complied with the request.
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As the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Raskin has been a vocal critic of the Republican-led impeachment inquiry and his committee’s ever-expanding probe into the president’s son Hunter. While Republicans, including Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY), have praised Bobulinski as “honest” and “solid,” Raskin has poked holes in the businessman’s credibility on a regular basis.
According to the complaint, Bobulinski claims that after he privately testified to the Oversight Committee on February 13 and then publicly appeared before Congress on March 20, Raskin sought to discredit Bobulinski by posting a series of “false statements” on social media.
Citing a March 31 interview on MSNBC’s The Weekend, the complaint asserts that Raskin “accused Mr. Bobulinski of being a Chinese or Russian spy and that Mr. Bobulinski has committed crimes, falsely impugning his credibility.” It further states that the congressman shared a clip of the MSNBC appearance on his social media page the following day, “republishing his false statements to an entirely new audience.”
According to the transcript, Raskin didn’t specifically mention Bobulinski by name but did mock the witnesses that the GOP has called in the impeachment probe, noting that “each one is supposed to be the star witness or the breakthrough witness and they turn out to be a Chinese spy or Russian spy or a guy in prison testifying from behind bars because he has defrauded Indian tribes out of tens of millions of dollars.”
Back in February and again in March, The Daily Beast reported on Bobulinski’s long-standing connections to a Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, an energy magnate who has been sanctioned multiple times by the U.S. government and has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Citing his connections to Vekselberg and the fact that other impeachment witnesses have disputed his unproven claims about the Bidens, Raskin has said Bobulinski’s background raises “giant red flags.”
The complaint also highlights Raskin’s Feb. 14 retweet of a House Oversight Democrats’ post featuring the congressman calling Bobulinski “Donald Trump’s political pawn” in a statement. Raskin further said in the statement that Bobulinski was “unable to support his claims against President Biden with any evidence,” and that Bobulinski instead accused a slew of other witnesses, FBI agents and even the Wall Street Journal of “lying” because they dismissed his allegations against the Bidens.
“Then, on March 6, 2024, Defendant issued a statement that House Oversight Democrats posted on X, and Defendant reposted, in which he called Mr. Bobulinski ‘a bitterly frustrated would-be business partner who collaborated with the Trump campaign,’” the lawsuit adds.
Claiming that Raskin made these remarks “to imply that Mr. Bobulinski lied to Congress to curry favor with President Trump and is a Trump campaign plant,” the complaint goes on to insist that Bobulinski “is not affiliated with the Trump campaign in any way” and “has never lied to Congress.”
Bobulinski’s suit alleges that Raskin “has been working in tag-team fashion with fellow Oversight Committee member, Rep. Dan Goldman, in a social media blitz of defamatory posts deliberately and maliciously besmirching the character of Mr. Bobulinski.” Earlier this month, after previously threatening legal action, Bobulinski sued Goldman for tweeting that he’d “used a Trump campaign-paid lawyer to make false allegations.” That defamation suit is also for $20 million.
Besides Goldman and Raskin, the one-time Hunter Biden partner is suing former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson for $10 million for writing in her book about his 2020 meeting with Trump’s then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows at a campaign event.
Last month, he filed another $30 million lawsuit against liberal Fox News pundit Jessica Tarlov for merely issuing a correction rather than a full-throated retraction and apology after she claimed on air that a Trump-associated political action committee had paid Bobulinski’s legal fees.
