Hunter Biden Testifies He Owns No Car or Phone in Fee Fight

Hunter Biden raised his hand, swore to tell the truth, and then told a lawyer something that made half the country roll its eyes. He said he is broke. Not "watching my spending" broke. He testified that he does not own a car. He does not own a phone. And when asked what he could sell to cover millions in unpaid legal bills, he pointed to some paintings he made himself.

The testimony came from a February 9, 2026 deposition that his own lawyers put out to the public. It reads like a man arguing he has nothing while camera lights follow him from one podcast studio to the next.

The $17 Million Bill He Says He Can't Pay

This whole fight started with a law firm called Winston Taylor, which you might remember as Winston & Strawn. The firm sued Hunter in June 2025, saying he stiffed them on the fees they racked up defending him. We are talking about federal criminal cases, congressional investigations, and a stack of defamation lawsuits he filed against people he considered enemies.

The number floating around is $17 million. Interestingly, the firm's original court filing only claimed more than $50,000, but Hunter himself has estimated his total legal costs landed somewhere between $14 million and $17 million. Either way, it is a bill most people cannot imagine, and the firm wants to get paid.

No Car, No Phone, No Nothing

When the lawyers asked Hunter what assets he had that could cover the debt, his answer was blunt. "I don't have any assets. I don't own a car. I don't own a phone," he said, according to the deposition transcript. That is a striking thing to say in 2026. Most Americans own a phone before they own anything else.

Then he stretched the poverty claim over his entire last name. "My family doesn't have any money, and it's not their debt anyway," he testified. So not only is Hunter tapped out, but the way he tells it, nobody named Biden has cash to lend him either. He does not deny the firm is owed money. He just says the well is dry.

The Only Thing He Says He Owns Is His Own Art

Hunter told the court there is exactly one thing of value with his name on it. "I don't own anything of any value other than ... my paintings which I painted myself," he said. "So that's it." He added that he does not even know what they are worth.

That is a little rich, because during his father's presidency Hunter was paid tens of thousands of dollars for those paintings. Critics called the work amateur at the time and questioned who exactly was buying it and why. Now the same paintings are apparently his entire net worth. From cash cow to last resort in a few short years.

He's Broke, But He's Everywhere

This is where the story stops adding up for a lot of readers. Hunter's lawyers described him in court papers as "impecunious," a fancy word for penniless, and claimed he was living abroad. But a broke guy hiding overseas does not usually show up in American recording studios week after week. He taped an episode of the Barstool Sports Macrodosing show at its Chicago studios, which is not exactly living abroad.

He has been on a full media tour, sitting for podcasts and interviews all over the country. He also reportedly landed a job at a luxury addiction treatment center in Los Angeles. None of that is illegal, but it clashes hard with the image of a man who cannot scrape together enough for a used Honda. Even people who feel for him have said the public Hunter and the under-oath Hunter look like two different guys.

Meanwhile, the Family Books Are Selling

Hunter says the family has no money, so let's look at the family. Former President Joe Biden reportedly landed a $10 million advance for a memoir scheduled to come out in November. Jill Biden already published her own memoir in June, and it hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list, though reports say that ranking was juiced by bulk sales.

Now, there is a fair counterpoint here. Book advances are not one giant check. They get paid out over several years and get chopped down by taxes, agent commissions, and other fees. Joe Biden reportedly walked out of the White House with around $800,000 in personal debt, and one report found he has had a harder time cashing in on the presidency than the guys who came before him. Still, $10 million is $10 million, and it makes "we have no money" a tough sell.

He Says It Was All His Lawyer's Idea

Hunter's defense is not just "I'm broke." It is also "they knew I was broke." He testified that attorney Abbe Lowell came to him after the 2022 midterms and told him the bills would work themselves out. "He absolutely at the beginning said, Don't worry, we'll work it out, we'll work something out," Hunter recalled. For reference, Lowell was billing $1,510 an hour.

Hunter also tried to pin the aggressive legal strategy on his lawyers. He said suing the IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, plus Rudy Giuliani and former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler, was not his call. "It was all part of a whole strategy that was instituted by Abbe, Winston," he said. Lowell's own deposition showed the firm scrambling to find donors in the "Democratic ecosystem," even floating a legal defense fund and a political nonprofit with former Obama lawyer Bob Bauer. None of it raised enough to make the firm whole.

The Pardon That Makes This Weirder

Do not forget how we got here. Hunter faced federal gun and tax charges in 2024. He was convicted and pleaded guilty, and then his father pardoned him on the way out of office in early 2025. The criminal jeopardy vanished. The legal bills did not.

So the odd shape of this fight is right there in the timeline. Hunter got the pardon that made all that expensive legal work far less important, and now he is in civil court arguing he cannot pay the very lawyers who did the work. The firm has responded by moving to put a lien on any judgment money that might ever flow his way. In plain English, they want to be first in line if he ever does come into cash.

The Bills Keep Coming

Winston Taylor is not the only party looking for a check. Hunter is also facing legal action from Lunden Roberts, the mother of his daughter Navy, who says he is not keeping up with his child support obligations. He has been disbarred as an attorney in Connecticut too, which closes off one obvious way a Yale-trained lawyer might earn his way out of a hole.

Court records and his own memoir have documented that a lot of the money he made during his father's years as vice president got burned through by addiction and heavy personal spending. That part is not really in dispute. The dispute is whether a family with a $10 million book advance and a bestseller can honestly say the cupboard is bare.

So Is He Actually Broke?

Here is the honest read. Hunter Biden really may not have a pile of liquid assets sitting in a bank account with his name on it. Years of chaos have a way of draining people. But "I don't own a phone" from a man doing a national podcast tour is the kind of line that is hard to reconcile with the life people have watched him live.

A judge will eventually sort out what he owns and what the firm can collect. Until then, we have a former first son swearing under oath that his only asset is his own artwork, while his parents cash book advances and he keeps booking studio time. Whatever you think of the Bidens, that is a strange sentence to write. And it is exactly the sentence Hunter's own deposition put on the record.