by WorldTribune Staff, March 3, 2022
The Secret Service told Republican investigators that it can't find records related to Hunter Biden’s taxpayer-funded travels for 2010, 2011, or 2013 — when Joe Biden was the vice president.
In a letter to the Secret Service last month, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin sought unredacted records tied to Hunter Biden’s travels between January 2009 and January 2017.
"They asked for full travel records and criticized the agency for years of 'inappropriate redactions' — especially related to a controversial Kazakhstan trip in 2014. The senators also lamented that three years of documents seemed to be missing entirely," Jerry Dunleavy, who covers the Department of Justice for the Washington Examiner, reported on Feb. 24.
Emails from Hunter Biden's laptop with Ukrainian Burisma official Vadim Pozharskyi show that Biden scheduled a meeting in 2014 with Karim Massimov, then the prime minister of Kazakhstan, to discuss an energy deal with Ukrainian gas giant Burisma.
“Vadim — I’ve chosen to carry on from Paris without the Secret Service,” Hunter wrote in a message dated May 26, 2014. “They are not happy about it, but it seemed far too complicated and unnecessary. Best, Hunter.”
Johnson and Grassley said they had determined that even though Hunter Biden was a Secret Service protectee from January 2009 through July 2014, the United States Secret Service (USSS) did not produce any communications about his travel for the years 2010, 2011, or 2013.
“[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.
In a letter in mid-February, Secret Service Director James Murray said the agency didn’t find any documents tied to the Republican requests.
“In consultation with the Department of Homeland Security, on June 11, 2021, the Secret Service provided documents responsive to your request in accordance with law, longstanding Executive Branch practice, and Department-wide standards,” Murray wrote to the GOP. “In October 2020, the Secret Service worked extensively with your committees, and agreed to search parameters provided by your offices to identify communications regarding Mr. Biden’s travel. These search parameters did not yield communications for the years 2010, 2011, or 2013.”
Republican investigators have specifically zeroed in on communications between the Secret Service, Hunter Biden, and his business associates at Rosemont Seneca Partners.
Last month, the senators noted that the Secret Service had handed over 259 pages of records, but with “extensive” and improper redactions.
“These inappropriate redactions impede our offices’ ability to understand the full scope of the interactions between Hunter Biden, his associates, and the USSS,” Johnson and Grassley wrote in January. “The USSS hid names and other information contained in email conversations regarding Hunter Biden without any proper legal justification.”
