Hunter Biden claimed under oath that his family "doesn't have any money" and that he owns no car, no phone, and no assets beyond his own paintings, a remarkable declaration from a man who once pulled a seven-figure salary from a Ukrainian energy company.

The claims surfaced in a deposition transcript released by Biden's new legal team in recent days, part of an escalating fight with the law firm Winston Taylor over what the firm says is a $17 million tab for years of legal work. Winston Taylor, a firm with a history of representing leading Democrats, says the bill covers its representation of Biden through criminal prosecutions, congressional investigations, and defamation suits against his critics. Biden's lawyers released the February deposition transcript as the dispute heads toward a collision over who owes what, and whether the firm knew from the start that its client could never pay.

The gap between Hunter Biden's past lifestyle and his sworn testimony is difficult to square. This is a man whose spending on crack cocaine, alcohol, luxury hotels, prostitutes, and jewelry became a matter of public record, and who eventually admitted the contents of his infamous laptop were real, after years of denial. Now he sits in a deposition chair and tells opposing counsel he has nothing left.

No car, no phone, no stocks, just paintings

Biden's own words in the deposition leave little room for ambiguity. Fox News Digital reported the key exchange from the transcript:

"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 in another passage.

"I don't have any assets. I don't own a car. I don't own a phone."

That is a sworn statement. If it is accurate, it means the son of a former president, a man who commanded a seven-figure salary while sitting on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm, has burned through everything. If it is not accurate, Biden made a false statement under oath.

Biden's defense in the lawsuit rests on a pointed claim: that Winston Taylor knew he could not pay when the firm took him on as a client, and that the two sides had agreed to "work something out." That framing shifts blame to the lawyers who chose to represent him. It does not explain where the money went.

Winston Taylor tried to connect Biden with Democratic donors

The law firm's side of the dispute adds another layer. Winston Taylor did not simply send invoices and wait. The firm attempted to connect Biden with Democratic donors who might help cover his mounting legal bills, an arrangement that, if it materialized, would have meant party allies effectively subsidizing the legal defense of a president's son.

Whether those efforts produced any money is not clear from the transcript. What is clear is that the firm believed Biden's political connections were an asset worth leveraging, even as the bills climbed toward eight figures.

Winston Taylor has also moved to place a lien on a $1.7 million defamation judgment that a judge awarded Hunter Biden in July. Biden won that judgment against Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne. But collecting on it may be difficult, Byrne is believed to be overseas, which complicates enforcement. The firm apparently sees that judgment as one of the few remaining pots of money it can reach.

The broader Biden family's financial picture does not help Hunter's case. The Wall Street Journal reported in September 2025 that former President Joe Biden has had far more trouble cashing in on his time in the White House than his predecessors. A source familiar with his finances told reporters that Biden accrued roughly $800,000 in personal debt upon leaving office. He also faces increased property taxes on his $2.7 million Delaware home.

$400,000 a year in pensions, and still in debt

Former President Biden does collect more than $400,000 a year in government pensions from his decades in Congress and his time in the White House, a figure cited by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. That is a comfortable income by any standard. Yet the family's public posture is one of financial strain, a posture that conveniently makes it harder for creditors like Winston Taylor to collect.

The contrast is stark. The Biden family spent years in the highest corridors of power. Hunter Biden sat on the board of a foreign energy company while his father served as vice president, a decision he has struggled to defend in multiple settings. On Tuesday, Biden told the "Armchair Expert" podcast that he should have never taken the Burisma job. That belated concession does not answer the more pressing question: where did the money from that job go?

Fox News Digital reached out to representatives for both Hunter Biden and former President Joe Biden on Friday. Neither responded.

Hunter Biden, of course, was spared the full weight of his federal criminal cases by a presidential pardon from his own father, a move that shielded him from potential prison time but did nothing to settle the private debts that piled up along the way. The pardon resolved his criminal exposure. It did not resolve the bills.

The Biden family's pattern of public candor arriving only after the damage is done has become familiar. Jill Biden's belated admissions about her husband's condition followed the same arc, deny, deflect, then quietly concede when it no longer matters politically.

And efforts to keep Biden family matters out of public view have not fared well. A federal appeals court rejected the former president's fight to keep ghostwriter interview recordings sealed, adding to a growing record of disclosures the family fought to prevent.

A seven-figure salary, then nothing

The math does not add up on its face. A man who earned a seven-figure salary from Burisma, who had access to the kind of connections that attract high-end legal representation on credit, now says he owns nothing, not a car, not a phone, not a savings account. His only asset, he says, is a collection of paintings he made himself, and he claims not to know what they are worth.

Winston Taylor is not a charity. The firm took on Biden's defense across criminal cases, congressional probes, and defamation litigation, the kind of sustained, high-stakes legal work that racks up enormous fees. Seventeen million dollars is an extraordinary sum, and the firm clearly expected to be paid. Biden now says the firm knew the money was not there. The firm says otherwise, and it is going to court to prove it.

The deposition transcript does not resolve the dispute. It does, however, put Hunter Biden's financial claims on the record under penalty of perjury. If he is telling the truth, the trajectory from Burisma board member to a man without a phone is a cautionary tale about what happens when reckless spending meets legal catastrophe. If he is not telling the truth, he has a much bigger problem than an unpaid legal bill.

Either way, the American taxpayer is still funding the Biden family's retirement to the tune of $400,000 a year, while the people who defended Hunter Biden in court wait in line to get paid.