Ashley Biden Files For Divorce From Husband After 13 Years

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.”

Ashley Biden Files for Divorce from Plastic Surgeon Howard Krein, Her Husband of 13 Years

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,

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, citing her representative.

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.

The wedding of Ashley Biden and Dr. Howard Krein in Wilmington, Delaware.

Shutterstock

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.

Ashley Biden, Joe Biden, Jill Biden and Howard Krein during a 2013 ceremony in Singapore.

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.”

Joe Biden and his daughter Ashley at the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024.

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.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human-interest stories.

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.

Jeffries Rips Democrats Over Deal to Reopen Government psss

Jeffries Rips Democrats Over Deal to Reopen Government

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries expressed anger over an emerging deal with Republicans to reopen the federal government after his party kept it closed for more than 40 days.

“House Democrats have consistently maintained that bipartisan legislation that funds the government must also decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis,” Jefferies said in a statement.

“For seven weeks, Democrats in the House and Senate have waged a valiant fight on behalf of the American people,” the statement continued. “It now appears that Senate Republicans will send the House of Representatives a spending bill that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

“As a result of the Republican refusal to address the healthcare crisis that they have created, tens of millions of everyday Americans are going to see their costs skyrocket. Many will not be able to afford a doctor when they or their children need one,” it continued.

“America is far too expensive. We will not support spending legislation advanced by Senate Republicans that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. We will fight the GOP bill in the House of Representatives, where Mike Johnson will be compelled to end the seven-week Republican taxpayer-funded vacation,” it said.The statement concluded: “Donald Trump and the Republican Party own the toxic mess they have created in our country and the American people know it.”

Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, with zero Republican votes in 2010, which included hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer-provided subsidies. At the time, they claimed that the ACA would “fix” healthcare and keep costs down, neither of which came true.

Also, Democrats have consistently voted to keep the government shut down for nearly a month and a half, thereby depriving tens of millions of Americans SNAP and other benefits, as well as paychecks for millions of federal workers and U.S. military personnel.

The Senate made a huge step toward reopening the government on Sunday night when several chamber Democrats gave in and joined Republicans in their effort to adopt a new proposal to end the closure.

As the day wore on, it became more and more evident that the shutdown, which was now in its 41th day as of Monday, would be coming to an end after senators revealed a bipartisan bundle of spending bills that they intended to attach to a modified plan to reopen the government.

Eight Democrats in the Senate voted with Republicans to end the shutdown, which was the first stage in the GOP-led plan. Many of the legislators who broke away from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., were part of conversations between Republicans and Democrats over the past few weeks.

Senators Angus King (I-Maine), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the second most powerful Democrat in the Senate, were a