
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 Philadelphiaâs Court of Common Pleas on Monday, according to The Post.
Bidenâs Instagram post on the same day showed a photo of her walking through a park and flashing a thumbs up, set to the tune âFreedomâ by BeyoncĂŠ.
She also posted a quote that read, âNew life, new beginnings, means new boundaries. New ways of being that wonât look or sound like they did before.â
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.
âAt 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,â she told the crowd.
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Joe Biden himself is also facing brutal news this week.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer says his investigation into Joe Bidenâs mental decline could be used to challenge some of the former presidentâs 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 âJust the Newsâ that Bidenâs frequent use of the autopen raises serious legal concerns.
âItâs questionable whether or not itâs legal to use an autopen on a legal document, but whatâs not questionable is if the President of the United States had no idea what was being signed with using the autopen in his name,â Comer said. âThen, you know, thatâs not legal. We could see criminal charges against some.â
Comer said his committeeâs evidence could also be used to call into question some of Bidenâs clemency acts, noting that the presidentâs poor summer 2024 debate performance âgave rise to questions about his mental capacity.â
Biden dropped out of the race one month later and endorsed Kamala Harris.
âI 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,â Comer said.
Former Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz told Just the News in March that such challenges would âend up in court.â He explained there would be two main issues: âOne, the nature of what was signed â was it a pardon, or was it a bill from Congress, for example. And second, the nature of the autopen.â
Dershowitz said the Constitution states of bills: ââIf he approves, he shall sign it.â So it says, âsign it.â Sign it. So an autopen would raise a real problem if he signed it by autopen, which is not a real signature.â
On pardons, he said, âit will still raise the issue: Did he actually pardon? Or did somebody else just write the signature without really getting approval from President Biden?â
Bidenâs first debate of the 2024 campaign season was described as âhaltingâ and âdisoriented,â with former Obama adviser David Axelrod saying, âI 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.â
Republicans had long questioned Bidenâs mental capacity.
Special Counsel Robert Hurâs February 2025 report on Bidenâs handling of classified documents noted he âwould likely present himself⌠as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.â 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, âI made every decisionâ on pardons; however, aides confirmed that he âdid not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons.â