Channel 5 Gave Hunter Biden a List of Its Subscribers’ Emails for Some Reason

Channel 5, a YouTube channel run by Andrew Callaghan, reportedly shared a list of its email subscribers with Hunter Biden, the son of the former president. After this, Biden promoted his new memecoin using the shared list, a move that a data privacy expert indicated might be illegal in certain jurisdictions. Callaghan has interviewed Biden multiple times.

According to a statement posted by Channel 5 on X, Biden requested the mailing list whenever he launched a new product. The statement confirmed that Channel 5 did provide Biden with a CSV sheet from their email list to expand his audience. However, Channel 5 later clarified that "emails from Hunter’s team have not gone out to any of our public subscribers," yet sharing the data in the first place has sparked significant backlash.

Experts believe that providing a list of email addresses of newsletter subscribers to a third party for direct marketing purposes is probably illegal, especially if the GDPR applies. Neil Brown, a data protection lawyer with Decoded Legal, emailed 404 Media expressing confusion about which list Channel 5 is referring to. However, it's clear that signing up for Channel 5's newsletter at the bottom of its members' website and merch store involves disclosing information that may not have been consented to.

According to Brown, the mailing list is a basic sign-up process with no additional information beyond joining the newsletter mailing list to "get a sneak peek of upcoming films and much more." Signing up to this list, in Brown's opinion, does not include consenting to having the email address given to Hunter Biden. Channel 5 has not yet responded to a request for comment.

This situation is particularly surprising because media companies typically do not hand over subscriber lists, as those individuals likely did not opt-in to sharing their contact information. Furthermore, the email list is an essential part of the media company's own business.