Echoes of the US intelligence community‘s politicization during and after the Obama administration reverberated in another agency long shrouded in enigma—the Secret Service—after it denied any record of having helped Hunter Biden cover up a 2018 scandal involving an illegal handgun.
Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., sought answers from agency head James Murray over the incident in a letter released Monday.
“Although Secret Service could not locate any records about the alleged October 2018 incident, questions still remain regarding whether any individuals connected to the Secret Service were aware of or took any action relating to this matter,” the GOP senators wrote.
The incident publicly came to light as one of many troubling items on Hunter Biden’s recovered laptop, which a Delaware computer technician first reported to the FBI in late 2019 after taking legal possession of the abandoned MacBook Pro.
John Paul Mac Isaac subsequently delivered a copy of the hard drive to Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani when it became clear that the FBI was pursuing a political cover-up rather than a serious investigation of the material.
Episodes, including the handgun incident, had been reported when the material first surfaced in October 2020. However, censorship by left-wing media and social-media platforms prior to the Nov. 3 election prevented meaningful scrutiny of concerns such as Hunter’s corrupt business deals with foreign governments, illegal narcotics use and possible sexual abuse involving his underage niece.
Giuliani just confirmed on Newsmax that Hunter Biden’s laptop contains pornographic images of underage children, that have now been turned in to the Deleware state police.
The Biden campaign is finished. pic.twitter.com/v1DnSXROzl
— RESISTING THE RESET (@PressResetEarth) October 20, 2020
Politico finally confirmed last month that the Secret Service was involved in the alleged handgun cover-up effort.
At the time, President Joe Biden was only a former vice president, making him ineligible for any Secret Service protection. Current law extends that protection to vice presidents, their spouses and children age 16 or younger for six months after leaving office. Hunter, who was 48 then, would have been ineligible regardless.
“It would seem particularly unusual and inappropriate if any individuals connected with the Secret Service were involved in light of your office’s acknowledgement that the ‘Secret Service did not provide protection to any member of the Biden family in 2018,'” wrote Grassley and Johnson.
By Hunter’s own admission—assuming, as most reasonable people have, the authenticity of the laptop material—the gun was carelessly discarded in a Dumpster by his brother’s widow, Hallie, with whom Hunter was conducting a torrid and unstable love affair at the time.
The circumstance of Hunter’s ownership of the gun while in rehab and grappling with serious mental-health issues has raised significant questions in light of his father’s calls to implement universal background checks and other draconian restrictions on the Second Amendment’s right to gun ownership.
Some have noted that under Delaware law, the unsafe storage of a handgun would be considered a serious misdemeanor at the very least, even if Hunter had obtained it legally.
But, once again, rather than investigating, local police, FBI and Secret Service all appear to have been working in tandem as the Biden family’s personal fixers, raising further questions about abuse of power and misappropriation of funding.
Adding insult to injury was the apparent denial of the incident by the Secret Service, which currently falls under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security.
“[Y]our office’s assertion that it cannot locate records related to this incident demands further explanation,” wrote Grassley and Johnson. “The Secret Service must explain, in detail, the steps that it took to respond to the committees, including whether your office communicated with any current or former personnel that may have been connected to the incident.”
The senators raised several additional questions about the scope and seriousness of the investigation. The letter was a follow-up to queries they sent last month to the Secret Service and the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
The pair, currently ranking minority members on the Senate Judiciary Committee, had also sent a request to the Secret Service last October inquiring about its travel records related to Hunter Biden during his father’s term as vice president.
They asked if the agency was “aware of incidents, separate from those mentioned above, where current or former Secret Service agents performed actions on behalf of the Biden family when they were not in a protectee status,” according to the letter.
Hunter is attempting to rehab his public image with the release of a memoir this week.
But he admitted during a recent CBS interview to promote the release that a laptop could have been “stolen” from him—effectively acknowledging that its contents might, thus, be authentic.
Months after it was alleged that a laptop revealed Hunter Biden’s business interests in China and Ukraine, the president’s son tells Tracy Smith that the laptop “could be” his
Watch the full interview this weekend on #CBSSunday pic.twitter.com/DhtY5IcPeg
— CBS Sunday Morning ? (@CBSSunday) April 2, 2021
