Hunter Biden Says in Court Filing He ‘Suffered a Significant Downturn in His Income’ — No One’s Buying His Art Anymore

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File

In a recent court filing, Hunter Biden said that he is having financial troubles, including millions of dollars in debt, housing difficulties after the fires in California, and plummeting sales of his book and artwork.

President Joe Biden’s son was pardoned by his father on December 1 after being convicted on federal gun and tax evasion charges, a move that was blasted by both Republicans and even many of the president’s supporters.

This latest legal activity, reported by NBC News, relates to a lawsuit Biden filed against Garrett Ziegler, a former trade policy aide to President Donald Trump, and Ziegler’s company, alleging that they had violated state and federal laws in connection with the creation of a website that published a searchable digital database of over a hundred thousand emails from that infamous laptop that belonged to the president’s son.

Biden is now moving to dismiss his lawsuit and on Wednesday, he filed a sworn declaration with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in support of that motion. In the declaration, Biden states that he “believe[s] in the merits of this case,” pointing out that Ziegler had repeatedly and publicly admitted to “hacking my iCloud,” he was still “requesting to dismiss this action because I do not have the financial resources to continue litigating this case.”

Biden then describes in detail the reasons behind his financial woes, including how his income “decreased significantly since late 2023.” Before then, Biden said, his income “primarily came from sales of my artwork” and sales of his memoir, Beautiful Things. Biden’s filing read:

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. 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. 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.

Biden added that he has had trouble paying off his “significant debt,” which he described as having been “reported in the press as being several million dollars” without offering more specific information.

According to Biden, his troubles have been “exacerbated” by the Pacific Palisades fire, “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.”

He concluded by explaining that he had been informed by his attorneys the estimated attorneys fees and costs it would take to continue this litigation, and because of his “limited resources” and the need to “allocate” them strategically, “I have made the decision to request that this case be voluntarily dismissed without prejudice and not expend any further resources and time on this case.”

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