Hunter Biden has said he is discontinuing his lawsuit against a former aide to Donald Trump because of his severe financial difficulties.
The son of former US president Joe Biden launched a legal claim against Garrett Ziegler in 2023, alleging he and his non-profit Marco Polo broke the law by publishing an online database containing 128,000 emails from a laptop belonging to Mr Biden.
Mr Ziegler has denied the claim as “completely frivolous”.
In a court filing to a US federal judge on Wednesday, Mr Biden’s attorneys asked to end the lawsuit, saying he could not afford to continue due to “significant debts” in the millions of dollars.
The legal letter claims the financial difficulties have been compounded by the devastating LA fires in January, which razed Mr Biden’s rental property in Malibu, making it unlivable.
The letter states: “Plaintiff [Hunter Biden] does not have the resources to continue to litigate this matter.
“Plaintiff has suffered a significant downturn in his income and has significant debt in the millions of dollars range. Moreover, this lack of resources has been exacerbated after the fires in the Pacific Palisades.”
But Mr Ziegler said he wanted Mr Biden to pay his legal costs in the case - telling the Daily Mail: “Hunter wants to cry uncle. We are opposing that. We want our attorneys' fees to be paid, for Hunter to cease lying about us and me, and just generally to shut the f**k up.”
The laptop, attributed to Mr Biden and found at a Delaware repair shop, featured heavily in the 2020 presidential campaign after its email contents were published.
But the Biden team argued at the time that the laptop was being used as a “smear campaign” by Republicans against the Democrats.
Last year, Hunter Biden was convicted on federal gun charges after he admitted to illegally owning a gun while a drug user.
He separately pleaded guilty in a federal tax case, in which he admitted failure to pay at least $1.4m (£1.1m) in federal taxes that he had reportedly owed for the tax years running from 2016 to 2019.
President Biden pardoned his son in December before his sentencing in the gun case and shortly before he left office.
