Hunter Biden has asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit he filed against a former Trump White House aide over alleged hacking of his laptop, citing severe financial struggles that have left him unable to pursue the case, court records reveal.
The 55-year-old son of President Joe Biden attributed his dire financial situation to recent wildfires in Los Angeles that forced him out of his home, as well as declining revenue from his art and book sales. These hardships have contributed to what he described as “significant debt,” making it impossible for him to continue legal action against Garrett Ziegler, according to a motion submitted Wednesday in a California federal court.
“[Hunter] has suffered a significant downturn in his income and has significant debt in the millions of dollars range,” his legal team stated in the filing, exposing the extent of his financial difficulties.
The fires that broke out in Pacific Palisades in January made his rental home uninhabitable, further worsening his already precarious financial position, the filing claims.
“Like many others in that situation, I am having difficulty in finding a new permanent place to live,” he wrote in the court motion.
“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.”
In addition to the fire-related setback, Hunter pointed to diminishing earnings from his artwork and his 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things, as key reasons for his financial decline.
“In the 2 to 3 years prior to December 2023, I sold 27 pieces for art at an average price of $54,481.48, but since then I have only sold 1 piece of art for $36,000,” he stated in the motion.
“Similarly, for my book sales, in the six month period before the statements (April 1, 2023 through September 30, 2023), based on the September 30, 2023 statement, 3,161 copies of my book were sold, but in the six months after the statements, only approximately 1,100 books were sold.”
Despite receiving praise for both his artistic work and memoir, Hunter said he had anticipated more financial opportunities, including paid speaking engagements, which have not materialized.
“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,” he explained.
Hunter originally took legal action against Ziegler in 2023, accusing him of unlawfully accessing and distributing sensitive materials from his laptop through Marco Polo, a right-wing nonprofit website operated by Ziegler.
Ziegler, who previously served as an aide to Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro, has made extensive portions of Hunter’s laptop data available online in the years following The Post’s initial reporting on the device in 2020.
The lawsuit alleges that Ziegler and others involved in the matter violated computer fraud and data privacy laws by accessing and disseminating “tens of thousands of emails, thousands of photos, and dozens of videos and recordings” stored on the device.
Apart from the case against Ziegler, Hunter has been engaged in ongoing legal battles with John Paul Mac Isaac, the former Delaware computer repair shop owner who first came into possession of the laptop and whose actions led to its contents being made public.
In the latest court filing, Hunter emphasized that he is carefully evaluating his pending legal matters to determine where to allocate his “limited resources” on a “case-by-case basis.”
{Matzav.com}