Hunter Biden says he can't afford to continue laptop-related lawsuit

Hunter Biden has told a federal judge he is facing severe financial difficulties and cannot afford to move forward with his lawsuit against a former aide to President Donald Trump.

The son of former President Joe Biden sued Garrett Ziegler in 2023, accusing him and his non-profit Marco Polo of breaking the law by publishing an online database containing 128,000 emails taken from a laptop attributed to Mr Biden.

Mr Ziegler has previously dismissed the lawsuit as "completely frivolous".

In a court filing on Wednesday, Mr Biden's attorneys asked US District Judge Hernan D Vera to end the lawsuit, stating that he "has suffered a significant downturn in his income and has significant debt in the millions of dollars range".

Mr Biden has also faced a series of financial setbacks, with January's wildfire in the Pacific Palisades - where he was staying - making his rental home "unliveable" for an extended period, according to the court papers.

Along with struggling to find stable housing and deal with fire damage, Mr Biden is having difficulties earning a steady income, according to the filing, and major sources of money have dried up.

Mr Biden is unable to borrow and sales of both his art and his memoir - his two major income streams - have fallen off over the last 18 months, according to the filing.

He had sold 27 pieces of art for an average price of $54,500 in the years leading up to the lawsuit. He has sold only one piece for $36,000 since.

Book sales for his memoir, Beautiful Things, dropped from more than 3,100 copies between April and September 2023 to roughly 1,100 in the following six months.

Mr Biden also has other lawsuits currently working through the court system and is assessing which ones he believes are worthwhile to continue, according to the filing.

Mr Biden and Mr Ziegler's legal teams have not returned the BBC's request for comment.

The judge had previously denied a motion to dismiss from Mr Ziegler and ordered him to pay roughly $18,000 in Mr Biden's legal fees.

A laptop abandoned by Mr Biden at a Delaware repair shop, and the seedy contents of its hard drive, featured prominently in the 2020 presidential campaign, and became a frequent focus for Republican lawmakers while his father was in the White House.

The Biden team argued at the time the laptop was part of a "smear campaign" engineered by Russian disinformation, but the hard drive has been authenticated by US media and is in the possession of the FBI.

Last year, Mr Biden was convicted of federal gun charges and pleaded guilty in a federal tax case.

President Biden pardoned him in December before his sentencing in the gun case.