President Joe Biden may have pardoned his son, Hunter, last December, but that doesn't mean the former first son's legal battles have gone away. According to recent reports and a court filing from last week, Hunter Biden is looking to get his laptop lawsuit dismissed, as he's claiming financial distress.
As a report from Axios frames the request, made before U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera, who was nominated by Hunter's father, it's one that "could bring a swift end to yet another lawsuit related to the alleged theft of personal data from his laptop and brings to light new details about the financial strain on the former president's son."
Hunter Biden brought the lawsuit against Garrett Ziegler, an aide to Peter Navarro from 2019 to 2021, though Ziegler is not the only one Biden has brought suits against. "Biden sued Ziegler in September 2023, accusing him of 'accessing, tampering with, manipulating, altering, copying and damaging computer data,'" Axios also mentioned.
The filing claims that the younger Biden has been affected by the California fires from the start of this year, in which his artwork burned up. Further, he's experienced "reduced book and art sales," which have been his primary source of income.
ABC News also has more from the court filing [emphasis added]:
In court papers filed Wednesday, Hunter Biden asked a federal judge to dismiss his lawsuit against online provocateur Garrett Ziegler because he "does not have the financial resources to continue litigating this case."
Amid lagging sales of his art and his memoir, the younger Biden remains "several million dollars" in debt after fighting multiple federal criminal cases, claiming in an affidavit that he only sold one painting for $36,000 since late 2023, after selling 27 paintings in the previous couple of years at an average price of nearly $55,000.
"Given the positive feedback and reviews of my artwork and memoir, I was expecting to obtain paid speaking engagements and paid appearances, but that has not happened," Hunter Biden wrote Wednesday.
He said that his "lack of financial resources has been exacerbated by the fires in the Pacific Palisades in early January, which has rendered my rental house unlivable for an extended period of time and, like many others in that situation, I am having difficulty in finding a new permanent place to live."
A person close to Hunter Biden told ABC News that his rental did not burn down, but that immense damage to the surrounding properties had limited his access to his residence.
The affidavit chronicles a series of hardships since his father's departure from office. Weeks before Trump's inauguration, then-President Biden pardoned his son shortly before two federal judges were scheduled to sentence him for a pair of criminal convictions in Delaware and California, for which he faced the possibility of substantial prison time.
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Hunter's paintings were also certainly in the news during his father's term as president, especially given ethical concerns to do with access. The Biden administration, including Jen Psaki, who was then serving as the first White House press secretary, dismissed such concerns. Their justifications and so-called reassurances were later contradicted by Georges Bergès, Hunter's art gallertist.
In a statement for Axios, Robert Tyler, an attorney for Ziegler, highlighted Hunter's influence, sharing, "It's no surprise Hunter Biden's money has run dry since he no longer has the same ability to peddle influence in the White House or other halls of government."
The former first son's influence was also on display last Tuesday, when Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairmen of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, respectively, invited IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler as their guests to President Donald Trump's speech before a joint session of Congress.
That Hunter is looking to drop such a suit could very well be a fitting end for the laptop controversy, with the story surrounding the laptop's contents coming out just days before the 2020 election between Trump and Biden. Social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, suppressed the story, and could very well have impacted the results of that election. It wasn't until far too long after that more came to light to do with social media, with many in the mainstream media also later acknowledging what we already knew all along to be true.
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