The 44-year-old former first daughter filed the paperwork in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas on Monday, according to The Post.
Biden’s Instagram post that same day featured a photo of her walking through a park and giving a thumbs-up, set to Beyoncé’s song “Freedom.”
She also shared 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 reason for the separation was not immediately clear. Divorce records are not made public in Philadelphia. Two years after her late older brother, Beau Biden, introduced them, Biden and Krein married in Greenville, Delaware, in June 2012.
Ashley publicly acknowledged her wedding while introducing 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 difficult news this week.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer says his investigation into Joe Biden’s alleged mental decline could potentially be used to challenge some of the former president’s pardons and executive orders. Comer argues that Biden’s staff have failed to establish that the former president knew what he was signing during his final months in office.
The Kentucky Republican told Just the News that Biden’s frequent use of an autopen raises serious legal questions.
“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 some of Biden’s clemency actions into question, noting that the president’s poor performance during the summer 2024 debate “gave rise to questions about his mental capacity.”
Biden dropped out of the presidential 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 that 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 regarding 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.”
Regarding 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 that 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 served as 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.”