Biden’s lawyers said that the wildfires in the Pacific Palisades made his money problems even worse because they made his rental home “unlivable for an extended period of time.”

They wrote that Biden “has had difficulty in finding a new permanent place to live as well as finding it difficult to earn a living.” They also said that Biden should use his time and resources to deal with his move, the damage to his rental house, and his family’s living costs, “rather than this litigation.”

A request for comment Wednesday from Ziegler’s lawyer did not get a response right away. Biden’s lawyers refused to say anything about the court filing.

Ziegler and the company he started, Marco Polo, were sued by Biden in September 2023. Biden said they broke state and federal laws by trying to make a searchable online database with 128,000 emails that were thought to be from Biden.

Ziegler, who worked as an assistant to Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro from February 2019 to January 2021, had asked the judge in charge of the case to throw out the case, but the judge had already turned it down.

In comments from last year, Ziegler said that the lawsuit was “completely frivolous.”

The judge told Ziegler in September that he had to pay about $18,000 for Biden’s lawyers’ fees.

Biden said in a related court document on Wednesday that he owes a lot of money and is “not in a position where I can borrow money.”

He said that he was looking forward to paid speaking engagements and appearances after getting feedback on his art and memoir, which his lawyers said had been his main source of income in the past, “but that has not happened.”

Biden talked about his falling profits from selling art. He said that in the two or three years before the lawsuit, he had sold 27 pieces of art for an average of $54,500 each. But since then, he had only sold one piece of art for $36,000.

Biden also talked about a drop in book sales. He said that from April to September 2023, when the lawsuit was filed, he sold more than 3,100 copies of his book. But in the six months that followed, he only sold about 1,100 copies.

It was found that Biden was guilty of federal gun charges and a federal tax case. He was set to be sentenced in December for the gun case, but President Joe Biden released him early.

Following his unconditional pardon from President Biden, Hunter Biden is also facing allegations of owing over $300,000 in unpaid rent to former landlords.

Shaun Maguire, a partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia, reacted to news of the pardon on social media, claiming that the president’s son has accumulated substantial unpaid rent debts amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“So what happens to the $300k+ in back pay rent that Hunter Biden owes my family from 2019-2020? Is that pardoned now? Thanks Joe,” Maguire wrote in a post on X.

On Sunday, President Biden issued a “full and unconditional pardon” for his son Hunter Biden, covering any federal crimes committed or potentially committed between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024. Hunter Biden has faced federal charges related to tax violations and allegations of providing false information about his substance abuse issues on a firearm background check form. The move marks a shift from President Biden’s earlier statements that he would not pardon his son.