A conservative advocacy group has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to gain access to Secret Service records tied to Hunter Biden.
Judicial Watch said it had filed a FOIA request with the Secret Service in March for “any and all records concerning the use of security and/or other services to Hunter Biden and any companions on any international travel” from 2010 to 2013.
The organization also submitted FOIA requests in April for “any and all records concerning the use of security and/or other services to Hunter Biden and any companions” and any records related to the use of taxpayer funds for the younger Biden’s security from the day of President Joe Biden’s inauguration to the present day, as well as for all records tied to taxpayer funds going to provide security for Hunter Biden and any associates in Malibu, California.
The younger Biden’s Secret Service detail is reportedly paying approximately $30,000 a month of taxpayer money to rent a mansion near his home in Malibu.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton contended that “the Secret Service is violating FOIA law by slow-rolling and hiding Hunter Biden records.”
The lawsuit was filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Congressional Republicans also believe they have run into problems getting their hands on Biden’s Secret Service records. The Secret Service has told Republican investigators it cannot find communications related to Hunter’s travels for 2010, 2011, or 2013 — when his father was vice president.
Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) sent the Secret Service a letter earlier this year seeking unredacted records tied to the travels that the president’s son made between January 2009 and January 2017. They asked for full travel records and criticized the agency for years of “inappropriate redactions” — especially those related to a controversial Kazakhstan trip in 2014. The senators also lamented that three years of documents seemed to be missing entirely.
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James Murray, the director of the Secret Service, said the agency didn’t find any documents tied to the Republican requests.
“[This] raises questions, given that USSS travel records show that Hunter Biden made trips to China and other destinations around the world, including Russia, Italy, Spain, and Mexico,” the senators said.
According to texts from the younger Biden, the Secret Service also inserted itself into a saga related to his sister-in-law Hallie Biden throwing his gun in the trash near a Delaware high school in October 2018. The agency has denied involvement.
Hunter Biden lamented that Hallie Biden, the widow of his brother Beau Biden, had given the impression he was “an abusive pedophile with homicidal tendencies” and said that “that’s now in the hands of the FBI.” He said police and the bureau opened an investigation into him over the incident.
The gun incident, the subsequent police response, and the Secret Service allegedly inserting itself into the saga were reported last year by Politico, and texts from Hunter Biden describing some of it, including the Secret Service’s purported involvement, were reported by the New York Post, in which Biden wrote, “When the police the FBI the secret service came on the scene.” Details of the ensuing argument between Hallie Biden and Hunter Biden were reported by the Washington Examiner.
The Secret Service attempted to retrieve the gun paperwork from a Wilmington, Delaware, shop in October 2018 after the firearm went missing, Politico reported. According to paperwork, Hunter falsely responded “no” to a question on the transaction record that asked: “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”
Secret Service agents also reportedly asked the owner of the store where Biden bought the gun to hand over the paperwork related to the sale. The Secret Service told the Washington Examiner last year it had “no involvement in this incident.”
Joe Biden, who was not under Secret Service protection at the time, said through a White House spokesperson last year he had no knowledge of the service’s involvement. His Secret Service protection resumed in March 2020 after it had stopped in 2017.
Hunter Biden gave evasive answers during an interview last year as part of a media tour promoting his memoir Beautiful Things.
When asked if he knew anything about the Secret Service looking for the gun’s record of sale, Biden said: “No, I had no idea. I don’t know whether the Secret Service were or why they would be — I don’t think that that’s true, to my knowledge.”
“The Secret Service did not provide protection to any member of the Biden family in 2018,” Secret Service special agent in charge Benjamin Kramer said in a 2021 letter. “Further, records searches concerning the reported involvement of Secret Service personnel in the alleged incident have yielded no results.”
Claims that the Secret Service was withholding records about its protectees came up again this month related to the House select committee’s investigation into the Capitol riot.
The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general said the DHS “notified us that many US Secret Service text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, were erased as part of a device-replacement program.”
Anthony Guglielmi, the chief of communications for the Secret Service, said the agency did not maliciously purge text message material but that some were lost due to a “device-replacement program” that began before the watchdog requested the records. He contended that “none of the texts” requested were among the lost data.
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The Secret Service has reportedly given a single relevant text exchange to the Jan. 6 committee so far.
