March 6 (UPI) — Hunter Biden says he can’t afford to continue his lawsuit accusing a former aide to Donald Trump of breaking state and federal laws by creating a searchable database of Biden’s emails.
Biden, 55, filed the lawsuit in 2023 in the U.S. District Court for Central California, accusing Garrett Ziegler of extracting emails from the same laptop Biden had denied was his after he left it at a Delaware computer repair shop for repairs years earlier and never retrieved it.
Biden says Ziegler accessed, tampered with, manipulated and altered the content obtained from his former laptop, The Hill reported.
Biden named Wyoming-based ICU LLC, doing business as Marco Polo, as a co-defendant.
Biden is the son of former President Joe Biden, and on Wednesday filed a motion for voluntary dismissal of the case due to financial hardship he says was caused by the recent Los Angeles-area wildfires.
Biden said he suffered a “significant downturn in his income and has significant debt in the millions of dollars range.”
Biden was renting a house that he says was destroyed in January by the Pacific Palisades wildfires, adding that he is “having difficulty in finding a new permanent place to live.”
He said he was aware his financial position had deteriorated significantly since late 2023, but “it was not until the past month that I realized I had to take drastic actions to alleviate this situation.”
Biden says his income primarily came from sales of his artwork and a memoir entitled Beautiful Things, but those income streams mostly have dried up now that his father is no longer president.
“In the 2 to 3 years prior December 2023, I sold 27 pieces for [sic] art at an average price of $54,481.48, but since then I have only sold 1 piece of art for $36,000,” Biden wrote.
He also said his book sales decreased from 3,161 copies between April 1, 2023, and Sept. 30, 2023, to about 1,100 copies during the following six months.
“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 said.
Given his current situation, Biden said he needs to focus his efforts on finding a new home and addressing his financial condition instead of continuing with the lawsuit against Zeigler, NBC News reported.
The motion for a voluntary dismissal does not mean Biden could not refile the federal lawsuit at a future date because it does not seek dismissal with prejudice if Judge Hernan Vera approves the motion.
Vera denied a motion in September to dismiss the case filed by Ziegler and ordered him to pay nearly $18,000 in attorney’s fees to Biden.
President Biden nominated Vera for the federal court seat in 2023. Vera had been a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge.