GOP Closing In on Hunter: Senators Demand to See Travel Records, Say Secret Service Hid Info
Hunter Biden is leading a quiet life now. He’s busy peddling his paintings to whoever wants them. People seem to, although that probably has more to do with the last name in the signature than the aesthetic value of what’s on the rest of the canvas.
In a former life, however, Hunter used to peddle influence — and not just at home. Between his activities in Ukraine, Mexico, China and Kazakhstan, inter alia, it seems the only continent where Hunter wasn’t selling the Biden name was Antarctica.
Then again, he might have been doing business there, too. Hunter’s international contacts are extensive, after all — and we’ve been covering them at The Western Journal from the beginning, back when the establishment media was content to ignore his corruption. You can help us keep bringing readers the truth by subscribing.
However, we wouldn’t know if Hunter was doing expensive consulting down on the frozen continent — if only because the Secret Service is keeping his travel records redacted.
According to a letter from GOP Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin to the director of the Secret Service, the agency’s redactions of Hunter’s travel records during Barack Obama’s presidency “impede our offices’ ability to understand the full scope of the interactions” Hunter engaged in while his father was vice president.
Hunter reportedly traveled aboard Air Force Two, the airplane used by the vice president, to China and Mexico on what appeared to be business trips. His travel under the protection of the Secret Service was more extensive than that — although how extensive remains unknown, because when Grassley and Johnson requested Hunter’s travel records, significant portions were blacked out.
“The [U.S. Secret Service’s] production contains extensive Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) redactions, which do not apply to Congress and should not be applied to this production,” the senators wrote in the Tuesday letter.
They also said the Secret Service “hid names and other information contained in email conversations regarding Hunter Biden without any proper legal justification.”
In one case, they said, the Secret Service redacted information pertaining to an individual on then-Vice President Joe Biden’s detail who may have arranged seats for Hunter and his business partners on a private flight from Paris to Kazakhstan.
“The USSS records that we previously made public show that Hunter Biden was in Paris, France from May 29, 2014, to June 7, 2014, while a protectee,” they wrote. “The USSS records do not show whether USSS personnel or Hunter Biden traveled to Kazakhstan in May or June 2014.”
There are even more significant gaps in the travel records provided to the senators.
“We determined that even though Hunter Biden was a USSS protectee from January 2009 through July 2014, the USSS did not produce any communications regarding Hunter Biden’s travel for the years 2010, 2011, and 2013.
“The USSS’s lack of communications during these years 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.”
Just to clarify why this is important, let’s go back to the first major Hunter Biden-related red flag: Burisma.
Burisma, you may remember, is a Ukrainian energy company. Hunter doesn’t have much experience in the energy sector, or in Ukraine — or in Eastern Europe, for that matter. However, Burisma was paying him $50,000 a month to sit on its board because he did … stuff. I guess.
Keep in mind, too, that this wasn’t a particularly functional period in Hunter’s life; it’s not like he aced the interview if he was in the state he says he was in at the time. As detailed in his memoir “Beautiful Things,” he was so desperately addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine that he says he smoked parmesan cheese and combed his rugs for pieces of crack rock.
“I went one time for 13 days without sleeping and smoking crack and drinking vodka exclusively throughout that entire time,” Hunter told “CBS Sunday Morning” in April of last year.
“I spent more time on my hands and knees picking through rugs, smoking anything that even remotely resembled crack cocaine. I probably smoked more parmesan cheese than anyone that you know.”
Our cheese-smoking protagonist was also doing business abroad at the time, which included significant entanglements with Mexican oligarchs and multifarious connections in China.
Not to belabor the point, but he was living the life of a hyper-successful international businessman while consuming such massive quantities of illicit substances that it’s a miracle he ever got out of his house. This doesn’t seem to have happened on merit.
In an appearance on Fox News on Friday, Grassley said it was “like pulling teeth to get answers from the executive branch, particularly on this subject,” but promised accountability for the president’s son, even if the Secret Service is covering for him.
“We know that [Hunter Biden] traveled sometimes in an airplane with his father,” Grassley said. “I can’t make any accusations against the president of the United States, but I think we have a right to know what the son was doing in those instances.”
When asked whether the Secret Service was hiding something in order to protect Hunter, Grassley said, “At this point, you can’t draw any other conclusions.”
“It’s very suspicious,” he added.
It always has been.
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