Hunter Biden told lawyers in a sworn deposition that his family "doesn't have any money" and that he owns no car, no phone, and no assets of any value, claims now at the center of a bitter fight over $17 million in unpaid legal fees.
The deposition transcript, taken in February and released in recent days by Biden's new legal team, landed as the son of former President Joe Biden faces a lawsuit from the law firm that represented him through years of criminal prosecutions, congressional investigations, and defamation litigation. The firm, Winston Taylor, says Biden racked up $17 million in bills and never paid. Biden's position, laid out under oath, is that the firm knew he could not pay and that both sides agreed to "work something out."
Neither Hunter Biden's representatives nor former President Biden's team responded when Fox News Digital reached out for comment.
Biden's sworn testimony reads like a bankruptcy filing. He told the lawyers deposing him that he has nothing left:
"My family doesn't have any money, and it's not their debt anyway. I don't own anything of any value other than, and I don't know the value of it, my paintings which I painted myself. So that's it. And I don't even have any other assets at all, stocks, bonds, anything like that, savings accounts."
He went further.
"I don't have any assets. I don't own a car. I don't own a phone."
That is a striking claim from a man who once earned a seven-figure salary sitting on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company, and who reportedly spent lavishly on crack cocaine, alcohol, luxury hotels, prostitutes, and expensive jewelry during his well-documented years of addiction. On Tuesday, Biden told the "Arm Chair Expert" podcast that he should never have taken the Burisma board seat in the first place, a concession that fits a pattern of belated admissions from a man who has spent years reframing his own record.
Where all that money went is a question the deposition does not answer. But the timeline is plain enough: Biden burned through a fortune, hired one of the most connected Democratic law firms in the country to defend him on multiple fronts, and now says he cannot cover the tab.
Winston Taylor is not a small-time outfit. The firm has a history of representing leading Democrats, and it took on Hunter Biden's defense across criminal cases, Capitol Hill probes, and civil defamation claims. The $17 million bill reflects the breadth of that work.
Biden's defense is that the firm understood from the start he had no way to pay, and that both sides had an informal understanding. His lawyers have framed the arrangement as one where the firm would "work something out" rather than bill at full rate with an expectation of collection. Winston Taylor apparently sees it differently, enough to sue.
The firm has also moved to put a lien on the one financial asset Biden has recently acquired: a $1.7 million defamation judgment a judge awarded him in July against Patrick Byrne, the Overstock CEO. That judgment came after Byrne was ruled against in court, but collecting it may prove difficult. Byrne is believed to be overseas, and Winston Taylor wants to attach whatever Biden manages to recover.
So the picture is this: Biden's only known incoming cash, $1.7 million, is already the subject of a lien attempt by a law firm claiming he owes ten times that amount. And the man who owes the money says he does not even own a phone.
Hunter Biden told the lawyers his family has no money. That claim may be closer to true than most people assume, at least by the standards of a former first family.
A source familiar with former President Biden's finances told reporters that Biden left the White House roughly $800,000 in personal debt. The Wall Street Journal reported in September 2025 that the former president has had more trouble booking paid speaking engagements than his predecessors, cutting off a revenue stream that past presidents used to rebuild their finances quickly.
Joe Biden does still pull in more than $400,000 a year in government pensions from his decades in Congress and his time in the White House, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. He also owns a Delaware home valued at $2.7 million, though that property carries rising property tax burdens.
None of that is Hunter Biden's money, of course. And Hunter Biden said as much under oath: "it's not their debt anyway." But the broader Biden family financial picture matters because it undercuts any assumption that the former president could simply write a check to make his son's legal problems disappear. The family that once had access to every lever of power in Washington now appears to be struggling with the bills that power left behind.
Biden was, of course, spared prison by his father's pardon, a pardon that resolved his criminal exposure but did nothing to resolve the cost of the defense that got him there. The pardon ended the legal jeopardy. It did not pay the lawyers.
One detail in the dispute stands out. Winston Taylor allegedly tried to connect Hunter Biden with donors in the Democratic ecosystem to help cover his legal bills. The effort apparently failed, or at least failed to produce enough money to satisfy a $17 million invoice.
That detail matters because it reveals the infrastructure around Hunter Biden's defense. This was not a standard attorney-client relationship where a client hires a firm, receives a bill, and pays it. This was a politically connected law firm taking on a politically radioactive client, working the party's donor network to fund the defense, and then, when the money did not materialize, suing the client for the full amount.
Meanwhile, Biden has continued to manage his public narrative on his own terms. He has used platforms like Substack to rewrite the laptop story and reshape how the public understands his legal and personal history. The deposition transcript, released by his own new lawyers, fits that strategy, putting his poverty on the record in a way that makes collection harder and public sympathy easier.
Whether a judge finds that argument persuasive is another matter. Courts tend to look skeptically at defendants who claim total destitution after years of high living and seven-figure income. Biden's sworn testimony about his finances will be tested against whatever financial records Winston Taylor can produce in discovery.
A man who once cashed checks from a Ukrainian energy giant, lived large on someone else's dime, and got a presidential pardon from his own father now says he cannot afford a phone. Taxpayers who fund the elder Biden's $400,000-a-year pension can draw their own conclusions about how seriously to take that claim.
