Immediately After Trump's Acquittal, GOP Senators Demand Secret Service Records on Hunter Biden's Travel
Now, it’s the Republicans’ turn.
Minutes after Wednesday’s acquittal of President Donald Trump on ginned-up impeachment charges, according to Fox News, two senior GOP senators delivered a letter to the Secret Service seeking information about former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s use of government resources during the Obama administration to conduct business that brought him millions of dollars.
Since the Democratic takeover of the House became official in January 2019, the American people have been treated to an endless series of sham investigations that culminated in the sham impeachment trial that just ended.
The impeachment made a household name of the Hunter Biden — the man who was paid at least $50,000 a month by the Ukraine energy company Burisma Holdings for services that remain mysterious.
Now, the letter to the Secret Service letter from Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin could be the beginning of the country finding out a lot more about how much Hunter Biden benefitted from his father’s name — and what else Bidens might have been up to.
Specifically, the letter directed Secret Service Director James Murray to:
“1. Please describe the protective detail that Hunter Biden received while his father was Vice President.
“2. Please provide a list of all dates and locations of travel, international and domestic, for Hunter Biden while he received a protective detail. In your response, please note whether his travel was on Air Force One or Two, or other government aircraft, as applicable and whether additional family members were present for each trip.”
It set a deadline of Feb. 19 for a response.
Two top Republican senators requested Hunter Biden’s official travel records Wednesday from the Secret Service in the latest move of their ongoing investigation into Biden’s conflicts of interest.https://t.co/P1fAway9EA
— The Federalist (@FDRLST) February 6, 2020
Joe Biden described his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination’s embarrassing loss in Iowa as a “gut punch,” according to CNBC. News that two Senate committees are asking the Secret Service about your son’s business dealings is just more bad news.
But he had to suspect it was coming.
As anyone who followed the impeachment investigation knows, Joe Biden is on record literally bragging about his role in the firing of a Ukraine prosecutor in 2016 who had investigated Burisma.
“In April 2014, around the time Hunter Biden joined Burisma, Vice President Biden reportedly became the ‘public face of the administration’s handling of Ukraine,” Grassley and Johnson wrote, citing a New York Times article from May.
“It is unclear whether Hunter Biden received government-sponsored travel or a protective detail for these endeavors.”
Less-well-covered was Hunter Biden’s work in China for Rosemont Seneca Partners, a firm he co-founded in 2009 (the year his father became vice president of the United States).
The letter from Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, might be about to change that.
”The Committee on Finance and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (‘the committees’) are reviewing potential conflicts of interest posed by the business activities of Hunter Biden and his associates during the Obama administration, particularly with respect to his business activities in Ukraine and China,” the senators wrote.
“We write to request information about whether Hunter Biden used government-sponsored travel to help conduct private business, to include his work for Rosemont Seneca and related entities in China and Ukraine.”
In particular, the senators noted a 2013 trip Hunter Biden took with his father to China that resulted in the formation of a corporation called BHR.
According to investigative author Peter Schweitzer and Government Accountability Institute senior researcher Jacob McLeod, writing in the New York Post, the new company had $1.5 billion in investors, including the China Development Bank and China’s social security fund.
And not only did Hunter’s firm have a 30 percent stake in it, but Hunter Biden was on the board of the new company too.
In other words, big money. Huge money. Money that almost makes Hunter’s $50,000 a month from Burisma look like pocket change.
That wasn’t a bad deal for Biden the younger. The question is whether — and how — Biden the elder, the No. 2 man in the U.S. government for eight years, was helping him get it.
As Fox News noted Thursday, this isn’t the first time questions have been raised about Hunter Biden’s suspiciously lucrative business arrangments.
Even during the Democratic-controlled impeachment hearings in the House, Fox reported in November, State Department career employee George Kent testified he was concerned about the apparent conflict of interest between Hunter Biden’s Burisma position and Joe Biden’s role as the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine.
Now that the malicious farce of impeachment has come to an end — for now, anyway — the American people might start getting some answers.
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