Former president Joe Biden’s troubled son Hunter is having a hard time finding income now that his father’s political career is over.
In court filings Wednesday, Hunter Biden admitted that money was hard to come by now that his art sales and book sales have dried up, and for that reason he is seeking to dismiss his lawsuit against former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler for uploading the materials from Biden’s abandoned laptop hard drive.
“While I believe in the merits of this case, and, indeed, note that Defendant Garrett Ziegler admitted to hacking my iCloud in multiple public statements, I am requesting to dismiss this action because I do not have the financial resources to continue litigating this case,” Biden said in a declaration supporting his motion to dismiss the case.
Biden disclosed that his income has decreased significantly since late 2023, because art sales and sales of his memoir, Beautiful Things, have dried up. Since then, he has sold one art piece for $36,000 and sold roughly 1,100 copies of his book. Before that, Biden sold 27 artworks for an average of $54, 481 and 3,161 copies of his book in the six months prior.
Biden said the lost income has hampered his ability to repay millions worth of debts, without disclosing specifically how much he owes. Making things worse, the wildfires that ravaged California’s pacific palisades made Hunter Biden’s rental home “unlivable” causing him to search for a new place to live. Biden has been living in California with his second wife Melissa Cohen and their young son Beau.
“While I was aware that my financial position had significantly deteriorated over time, it was not until the past month that I realized I had to take drastic actions to alleviate this situation. Then, during the week of February 24, 2025, I was informed of all the work that was going to be performed over the next two months and the estimated amount of fees and costs and over the weekend of March 1-2, 2025, I decided to voluntarily dismiss this action,” Biden added.
Excerpts from Beautiful Things were used against him in his federal gun case last June, where Biden was convicted in Delaware on three felony charges. Special counsel David Weiss’s team of prosecutors also presented Biden’s physical laptop and brought FBI agent Erica Jensen to the stand to explain how the computer data was verified.
Jensen testified that the FBI obtained Biden’s laptop hard drive in late 2019 and extracted data from the computer after receiving a search warrant. Federal investigators verified the laptop’s materials by cross referencing its serial number to Biden’s iCloud storage accounts. Her testimony about how the laptop was verified matched the story told by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley when he came forward to the House Ways and Means Committee in spring 2023.
Around the time Hunter Biden’s income fizzled out, the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden was making national headlines and Weiss’s tax indictment against Hunter Biden brought fresh scrutiny to his foreign business dealings and lavish spending habits.
Weiss’s prosecution came after Shapley and IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler came forward with detailed allegations of misconduct against Justice Department officials on the years-long investigation into Biden’s taxes. The whistleblower revelations preceded the collapse of Hunter Biden’s generous plea deal with Weiss, who handled the case as Delaware U.S. attorney before Attorney General Merrick Garland elevated him to special counsel in August 2023.
Eventually, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to nine tax charges last September related to his failure to pay over $1.4 million of taxes over several years last decade. Right before his sentencing dates in December, then-President Joe Biden pardoned his son of the gun and tax charges.
The sweeping pardon covered the time period from January 1, 2014 to December 1, 2024, the time span when Biden made millions off lucrative foreign business dealings and lived a lifestyle defined by drug addiction, exorbitant spending, and relationships with various women.
Hunter Biden’s lawsuit accuses Ziegler of hacking into his laptop and iPhone backup, and manipulating the files on the devices. Ziegler has vigorously denied the allegations of manipulating Biden’s data, which his nonprofit, Marco Polo, shared onto a publicly available database.
Marco Polo uploaded the files after Ziegler obtained a copy of Biden’s laptop hard drive around the time Rudy Giuliani provided a copy of it to the New York Post, allowing the outlet to break the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop contents ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Ziegler’s attorneys argued that Biden did not provide ample evidence of manipulation and was using the lawsuit to try to silence their client. Marco Polo’s paired its database with a 600-page report on all of the information on Hunter Biden’s laptop related to his foreign business dealings, a document that has circulated among Republican lawmakers.