Hunter Biden has left the United States and is living overseas, his own attorney confirmed in a federal court filing, even as the former first son faces a lawsuit over unpaid legal bills and claims to be buried under $17 million in debt. The Daily Mail revealed the disclosure, which came in an April 6 filing in Washington, D.C., where the law firm Winston & Strawn is suing Biden for fees tied to his criminal defense.
The filing, submitted by Hunter's attorney Barry Coburn, states flatly: "Mr. Biden lives abroad." Coburn did not specify where. He declined to comment to the Daily Mail. But the 56-year-old Biden has been spotted in South Africa multiple times over the past year, the home country of his wife, Melissa, 39.
For a man who says he is penniless, Hunter Biden seems to have no trouble crossing oceans. And for a family that spent four years in the White House preaching accountability, the picture that emerges here is one of evasion, of creditors, of courts, and of consequences.
Winston & Strawn filed its complaint in D.C. Superior Court in June of last year, alleging Hunter owed "substantially in excess of $50,000 in fees and interest" after nearly three years of representation. The firm's attorney Abbe Lowell had represented Hunter in courtroom battles with the Justice Department in both Delaware and California over gun and tax crimes.
Hunter himself put a number on his financial hole during a podcast appearance last year. He acknowledged the "privilege" of being a Biden, then added a qualifier meant to sound like penance.
"You want accountability? Look at the past six years of my life and the $17 million of debt that I'm in, as it relates to my legal fees."
That's a striking line from a man whose legal troubles stem from his own conduct, tax evasion and a federal gun charge, not from some act of public service gone wrong. The debt didn't happen to Hunter Biden. He built it.
In the April 6 filing, Coburn described his client as "impecunious", a legal term for penniless. He wrote that Hunter could not even afford to hire experts to review his own emails and electronic devices as part of the lawsuit's discovery process.
"We have not engaged a billing consultant or forensic accountant to review the bills, just as we have not engaged an e-discovery vendor. We cannot afford it."
If Hunter Biden is broke, he has a peculiar way of showing it. In a November interview with South African podcaster Joshua Rubin, he described his growing attachment to Cape Town in terms that don't exactly scream austerity.
"I've fallen madly in love with Cape Town. You guys don't know how good you have it here. It's the most beautiful city in the world."
He also raved about the food. "It is across the board the most consistently good food from the corner burger place to the super fine dining," he told Rubin. He said his family was "trying to be between Cape Town and the States."
During a May 2025 trip to Cape Town, Hunter was photographed in the affluent neighborhood of Sea Point, parking a rented Toyota hatchback, a long way from the armored, chauffeured SUVs of his White House years. That trip prompted President Donald Trump to revoke Hunter's Secret Service detail over the cost of protecting him overseas.
"There are as many as 18 people on this Detail, which is ridiculous!" Trump posted on Truth Social at the time. The protection team was recalled.
The broader pattern of federal accountability measures taken under the current administration has extended well beyond the Biden family, but Hunter's case remains one of the most visible symbols of a political class that plays by different rules.
For years, Hunter's lifestyle was bankrolled not by his own income but by Kevin Morris, a wealthy Hollywood attorney dubbed his "sugar brother." Morris loaned Hunter more than $6.5 million at 5% interest, according to a letter Morris's lawyer sent to the House Oversight Committee. At least $2.2 million of that went to cover Hunter's IRS debts.
The interest alone on the total sum runs $325,000 a year. Morris, who made his fortune representing the creators of the TV show South Park in a $935 million deal with ViacomCBS, even flew Hunter to his criminal hearings in Delaware on a private jet.
Hunter also tried to generate cash through an art career that raised eyebrows from the start. Between 2021 and 2024, he sold paintings totaling $1.5 million, to Democrat donors and family friends. But demand cratered once his father left office.
"I have only sold 1 piece of art for $36,000," Hunter wrote in a March 2025 court filing, describing his sales since December 2023. The market, it turns out, valued proximity to power more than brushwork.
Hunter's financial claims grow harder to square with his obligations. He owes a reported $5,000 a month in child support for his seven-year-old daughter Navy, whom he conceived with former employee Lunden Roberts. In January, Roberts filed court papers in Arkansas alleging that Hunter had failed to hand over artworks he had promised to give the child.
Roberts has been fighting for years to hold Hunter accountable. As recently covered, she has sought his arrest over the child support dispute, pressing an Arkansas court to enforce its orders against a man who now apparently lives on another continent.
It is a grim picture: a father who claims poverty in one courtroom while describing "super fine dining" in Cape Town on a podcast. A man who tells a judge he cannot afford an e-discovery vendor but somehow funds intercontinental travel for his family.
The legal and personal conflicts surrounding Hunter Biden have drawn sustained attention from courts and the public alike, and his move overseas only deepens the questions about whether anyone in a position of authority intends to enforce the obligations he has left behind.
Despite his professed foreign residency, Hunter has continued to visit the United States. His half-sister Ashley Biden posted a photo on Instagram this month showing Hunter seated next to his ailing father, Joe Biden, at an Easter gathering in Santa Ynez, California. Hunter's son Beau sat on his lap, surrounded by other young family members and stepmother Jill Biden.
Joe Biden, 83, revealed in May 2025 that he is battling "aggressive" prostate cancer. His cancer had spread to the bone and was graded a Gleason score of nine, the most aggressive kind, though the former president told reporters his "prognosis is good."
Who paid for Hunter's 10,000-mile trip from Cape Town to California remains unclear, a fair question given his lawyer's insistence that the former first son is flat broke.
The broader landscape of legal and political confrontations involving prominent Democratic figures continues to widen, but few cases illustrate the gap between public rhetoric and private conduct as vividly as this one.
Hunter also recently asked a Los Angeles federal judge to dismiss his lawsuit against Garrett Ziegler, a former Trump White House aide whom Hunter accused of hacking his infamous laptop. Hunter claimed he no longer had the money to pursue the case. Ziegler, who runs the right-wing nonprofit Marco Polo, denied the hacking allegations. He pointed out that Hunter had abandoned the laptop at a Delaware computer store and left passwords to his backup on the device.
Marco Polo published an extensive report on evidence of alleged crimes found on Hunter's laptop. The nonprofit was also the first to flag the April 6 court filing revealing that Hunter had left the country.
The filing's disclosure that Hunter Biden now "lives abroad" raises questions no one in the Biden orbit appears eager to answer. Where, exactly, is he? Who is funding his life there? And what happens to the creditors, the courts, and the seven-year-old daughter he left behind in the United States?
Accountability, Hunter Biden once said, is written across the past six years of his life. It appears he's decided to finish writing that chapter from the other side of the world, where American courts have a much harder time reading it.