Hunter Biden asked a federal judge Wednesday to dismiss his lawsuit against an ex-Trump aide that centers on the publication of contents of a laptop attributed to the former president’s son, saying his dwindling financial resources have made it difficult to proceed with litigation.
In documents filed in federal court in California, Biden’s attorneys urged U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera to dismiss the 2023 lawsuit filed against Garrett Ziegler. They said Biden “has suffered a significant downturn in his income and has significant debt in the millions of dollars range.”
His financial troubles were made worse, Biden’s attorneys said, after the wildfires in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles “upended” his life by making his rental home “unlivable for an extended period of time.”
Biden “has had difficulty in finding a new permanent place to live as well as finding it difficult to earn a living,” they wrote, adding that he needs to direct his time and available resources to dealing with his relocation, the damage to his rental house and his family’s living expenses, “as opposed to this litigation.”
An attorney for Ziegler did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Biden’s attorneys declined to comment on the court filing.
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Biden sued Ziegler and the company he founded, Marco Polo, in September 2023, claiming they broke state and federal laws to create an online searchable database with 128,000 emails attributed to Biden.
The judge overseeing the case had rejected a motion to dismiss it by Ziegler, who was an aide to Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, from February 2019 to January 2021.
Ziegler referred to the lawsuit in comments last year as “completely frivolous.”
In September, the judge ordered Ziegler to pay roughly $18,000 for Biden’s legal fees.
Biden said in a related court filing Wednesday that he faces millions of dollars of debt and is “not in a position where I can borrow money.”
He said he had anticipated paid speaking engagements and appearances following feedback from his artwork and memoir, which his attorneys identified as his main source of income in previous years, “but that has not happened.”
Detailing flagging profits from his art sales, Biden said that while he had sold 27 pieces for an average of roughly $54,500 in the two or three years leading up to the lawsuit, he had sold only one piece of art for $36,000 since then.
Biden also described a slump in book sales, saying he went from selling more than 3,100 copies of his book from April through September 2023, when the lawsuit was filed, to about 1,100 over the six-month period that followed.
NBC News has reported extensively on Biden’s financial troubles and efforts to secure additional income, including a legal defense fund that ultimately did not get off the ground.
Biden was found guilty on federal gun charges last year, and he pleaded guilty in a federal tax case. President Joe Biden pardoned him shortly before he was scheduled to be sentenced in the gun case in December.
Sarah Fitzpatrick is a senior investigative producer and story editor for NBC News. She previously worked for CBS News and “60 Minutes.”
Zoë Richards is a politics reporter for NBC News.
