Ashley Biden, the daughter of former President Joe Biden, has filed for divorce from her plastic surgeon husband, Dr. Howard Krein, after over 13 years of marriage, according to court records.
The 44-year-old ex-first daughter filed the paperwork in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas on Monday, according to The Post.
Biden’s Instagram post on the same day showed a photo of her walking through a park and flashing a thumbs up, set to the tune “Freedom” by Beyoncé.
She also posted a quote that read, “New life, new beginnings, means new boundaries. New ways of being that won’t look or sound like they did before.”
The cause of the separation was not immediately obvious. Divorce records are not made public in Philadelphia. Two years after her late older brother, Beau Biden, introduced them, Biden and Krein tied the knot in Greenville, Delaware, in June 2012.
Ashley acknowledged her wedding on the national stage while presenting her father at the Democratic National Convention last year.
“At the time, my dad was vice president, but he was also that dad who literally set up the entire reception. He was riding around in his John Deere 4-wheeler, fixing the place settings, arranging the plants, and by the way, he was very emotional,” she told the crowd.
Joe Biden himself is also facing brutal news this week.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer says his investigation into Joe Biden’s mental decline could be used to challenge some of the former president’s pardons and executive orders, arguing staff have failed to prove Biden knew what he was signing in his final months in office.
The Kentucky Republican told “Just the News” that Biden’s frequent use of the autopen raises serious legal concerns.
“It’s questionable whether or not it’s legal to use an autopen on a legal document, but what’s not questionable is if the President of the United States had no idea what was being signed with using the autopen in his name,” Comer said. “Then, you know, that’s not legal. We could see criminal charges against some.”
Comer said his committee’s evidence could also be used to call into question some of Biden’s clemency acts, noting that the president’s poor summer 2024 debate performance “gave rise to questions about his mental capacity.”
Biden dropped out of the race one month later and endorsed Kamala Harris.
“I think at the end of the day, our investigation … could be used as evidence in trying to overturn some of those pardons and some of the executive orders, because the autopen was used so frequently … after that debate,” Comer said.
Former Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz told Just the News in March that such challenges would “end up in court.” He explained there would be two main issues: “One, the nature of what was signed – was it a pardon, or was it a bill from Congress, for example. And second, the nature of the autopen.”
Dershowitz said the Constitution states of bills: “‘If he approves, he shall sign it.’ So it says, ‘sign it.’ Sign it. So an autopen would raise a real problem if he signed it by autopen, which is not a real signature.”
On pardons, he said, “it will still raise the issue: Did he actually pardon? Or did somebody else just write the signature without really getting approval from President Biden?”
Biden’s first debate of the 2024 campaign season was described as “halting” and “disoriented,” with former Obama adviser David Axelrod saying, “I think there was a sense of shock actually, how he came out at the beginning of this debate… I think the panic had set in.”
Republicans had long questioned Biden’s mental capacity.
Special Counsel Robert Hur’s February 2025 report on Biden’s handling of classified documents noted he “would likely present himself… as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur said Biden could not recall the years he was vice president or the year his son Beau died.
Last month, Biden defended his decisions regarding pardons to The New York Times, stating, “I made every decision” on pardons; however, aides confirmed that he “did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons.”
The former first daughter, 44, married Krein, 58, at a church in Delaware in 2012
Ashley Biden, the daughter of former President Joe Biden and former first lady Dr. Jill Biden, has reportedly filed for divorce from her husband, Dr. Howard Krein, after 13 years of marriage.
On Monday, Aug. 11, Ashley, 44 — who married Krein, 58, on June 2, 2012 — filed the documents in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas,
On the same day, Ashley posted a since-deleted photo of herself walking through a park, giving a thumbs up on her Instagram Stories, while Beyoncé’s “Freedom” played in the background, per the outlet.
The former first daughter had also reposted the quote, “New life, new beginnings means new boundaries. New ways of being that won’t look or sound like they did before,” on Instagram, set to the tune of Ms. Lauryn Hill’s “Freedom Time,” the newspaper noted.
A representative for Ashley did not immediately respond when contacted by PEOPLE for comment. PEOPLE has also reached out to Krein.
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As previously reported by PEOPLE, Ashley and Krein tied the knot at the steepled St. Joseph on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church, in Greenville, Delaware, in a ceremony combining the bride’s Catholic traditions and the groom’s Jewish ones.
Afterward, the newlyweds and around 200 family members and close friends headed to the Biden family’s lakeside home in nearby Wilmington for a reception and dinner served family-style in the backyard.
Lau Fook Kong, The Straits Times/AP Photo
Joe, who was the U.S. vice president at the time, personally prepped for the big event, with him and his wife, Jill, laying fresh sod and planting special fast-growing vines up the latticework around the party tent.
The now-former president escorted the bride down the aisle and had prepared to be emotional about giving away the youngest of his children.
“I kept telling Ash, we’ve got to open up the church and practice walking up and down the aisle so I can handle it,” he previously told PEOPLE in the days leading up to the wedding.
While reminiscing about the only other time he’d seen his daughter in a veil — at her First Communion — Joe added at the time, “I think to myself, aw, God, my little girl! This can’t have passed so quick.”
Andrew Harnik/Getty
Ashley and Krein started dating in the summer of 2010, after meeting through Beau Biden, one of her two older half-brothers. They then got engaged in October 2011 after Krein proposed at sunset on a cliff in Big Sur, Calif.
Joe previously told PEOPLE of Krein asking for his permission to marry his daughter, “This is the right guy. And he’s getting a helluva woman.”
Ashley has largely lived life away from the spotlight, but she did bring her father to tears after she introduced him at the Democratic National Convention in August 2024.
She mentioned how emotional her father was on her wedding day in her speech, saying, “Before he walked me down the aisle, he turned to me and said he would always be my best friend. All these years later, Dad, you are still my best friend.”
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Krein was in the Oval Office with the Biden family on an important day in 2024, when Joe delivered a speech on his decision to abandon his reelection bid.
A federal appeals court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump to move forward with his effort to overturn his criminal conviction in the hush money case in New York City.
Trump is seeking to transfer the case from New York state court to federal court, arguing that a federal judge should dismiss the jury’s 34-count guilty verdict based on the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity, The Hill reported.
A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit said it “cannot be confident” that the lower court properly weighed Trump’s arguments in his effort to transfer the case to federal court.
“The court bypassed what we consider to be important issues bearing on the ultimate issue of good cause,” the panel noted in its ruling.
“We leave it to the able and experienced District Judge to decide whether to solicit further briefing from the parties or hold a hearing to help it resolve these issues,” the panel added.
The panel included U.S. Circuit Judges Raymond Lohier and Susan Carney, both appointed by former President Obama, as well as U.S. Circuit Judge Myrna Pérez, who was appointed by former President Biden.
Trump was convicted last year on charges of falsifying business records related to payments intended to conceal an alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
“President Trump continues to win in his fight against Radical Democrat Lawfare,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement. “The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the Federal and New York State Constitutions, and other established legal precedent mandate that the Witch Hunt perpetrated by the Manhattan DA be immediately overturned and dismissed.”
“President Trump will keep defeating Democrat weaponization at every turn as he focuses on his singular mission to Make America Great Again,” the spokesperson added.
It’s been a rough few weeks for James as she battles her own personal court case.
The judge presiding over New York Attorney General Letitia James’ mortgage fraud case on Friday rejected a motion seeking to compel federal prosecutors to maintain a log of all their communications with the media.
Defense attorney Abbe Lowell had filed the request last week, following James’ arraignment on charges of bank fraud and making false statements. The motion cited a report alleging that U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan exchanged a series of encrypted Signal messages with a reporter regarding the case, the New York Post reported.
Walker further wrote that while Halligan’s Signal chat with Lawfare senior editor Anna Bower earlier this month was “unusual,” he nevertheless declined to offer an opinion “on whether they were improper in any sense, either legal or ethical.”
He went on to order federal prosecutors to follow all rules of the court but did not suggest that they had violated any so far.
He also ordered a “litigation hold preventing the deletion or destruction of any records or communications having to do with the investigation or prosecution of this case.”
Halligan’s Signal messages to the reporter were configured to automatically disappear after eight hours, The Post reported.
The judge did not address whether Halligan’s communications — which reportedly disputed a New York Times story revealing that James’ grandniece told a grand jury she had never paid rent on the Norfolk, Va., property at the center of the case — constituted material subject to discovery requirements.
In response to James’ motion, federal prosecutors requested that Judge Walker impose a gag order on the New York attorney general — a request he declined.
James pleaded not guilty last week to one count of bank fraud and one count of making a false statement to a financial institution.
According to the indictment, the longtime Trump adversary purchased a three-bedroom, one-bathroom home on Peronne Avenue in Norfolk on August 17, 2020, using a $109,600 loan that included a “second home rider” identifying her as the sole occupant. That designation allegedly allowed James to secure more favorable mortgage terms, saving her nearly $19,000.
However, prosecutors say the home “was not occupied or used” by James, but “was instead used as a rental investment property” to house her grandniece, Nakia Thompson.
If convicted on both counts, James faces up to 60 years in prison and a $2 million fine.