Hunter Biden, who claims that his declining financial resources have made it difficult to pursue legal action, asked a federal judge on Wednesday to dismiss his lawsuit against a former Trump aide that focuses on the publication of contents from a laptop that was allegedly owned by the former president’s son.
Biden’s lawyers urged U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera to dismiss the 2023 lawsuit against Garrett Ziegler in documents submitted to a federal court in California. According to them, Biden “has experienced a substantial decline in his income and has substantial debt in the millions of dollars range.”
Biden’s financial difficulties worsened, according to his lawyers, after the wildfires in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles “upended” his life by rendering his rental home “unlivable for an extended period of time.”
In the letter, they stated that Biden “has had difficulty in finding a new permanent place to live as well as finding it difficult to earn a living” and that, “as opposed to this litigation,” he should focus his time and resources on relocating, fixing the damage to his rental home, and covering his family’s living expenses.
A request for comment on Wednesday was not immediately answered by Ziegler’s lawyer. Regarding the court filing, Biden’s lawyers chose not to comment.
In September 2023, Biden filed a lawsuit against Ziegler and Marco Polo, the company he founded, alleging that they violated federal and state laws by creating a searchable online database that contained 128,000 emails that were allegedly sent by Biden.
Ziegler, who worked as an aide to Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro from February 2019 to January 2021, had moved to have the case dismissed, but the judge hearing it denied his request.
In remarks last year, Ziegler called the lawsuit “completely frivolous.”
The judge mandated in September that Ziegler reimburse Biden’s legal fees, which came to about $18,000.
In a related court filing on Wednesday, Biden stated that he is “not in a position where I can borrow money” due to his massive debt.
After receiving feedback on his artwork and memoir, which his lawyers said were his primary sources of income in prior years, he said he had expected paid speaking engagements and appearances, “but that has not happened.”
In the two or three years prior to the lawsuit, Biden sold 27 pieces of art for an average of about $54,500, but he has only sold one piece for $36,000 since then, he said, describing declining profits from his art sales.
Biden also detailed a decline in book sales, claiming that during the six months that followed the lawsuit’s filing, he sold roughly 1,100 copies of his book, down from over 3,100 between April and September 2023.
Biden’s financial difficulties and attempts to raise more money, including a legal defense fund that eventually failed, have been widely covered by NBC News.
Last year, Biden entered a guilty plea in a federal tax case after being found guilty on federal gun charges. He was about to be sentenced in the gun case in December when President Joe Biden pardoned him.
