A trove of documents released under a federal lawsuit reveals Secret Service officials were baffled as to why the agency intervened when a gun belonging to then-former Vice President Joe Biden's adult son Hunter was found illegally discarded in a garbage receptacle.
In October 2018, Hallie Biden, Hunter Biden's girlfriend, and widow of his brother Beau, took a .38 handgun belonging to Hunter and tossed it in a trash can at Janssen's supermarket in Wilmington, Delaware.
When the gun was found illegally discarded, Secret Service agents reportedly went to the firearms dealer from whom Hunter bought to demand he give them the paperwork showing it belonged to him. The dealer refused.
The nonprofit public interest law firm Judicial Watch recently received 487 pages of records from the Secret Service related to the incident, which went public in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, threatening Biden's presidential bid.
The documents reveal the Secret Service scrambled to craft a media message to help Biden, with officials asking why agents had even intervened in 2018, as Biden was not receiving Secret Service protection at the time.
In a series of emails, one official asks, “Maybe we were asked for a favor?”
“The records also show the agency alerted the Biden White House and crafted a public statement insisting it had ‘no involvement in this alleged incident' and refusing to provide any additional clarification to media inquiries,” Judicial Watch reports.
The Secret Service has since given conflicting accounts of its involvement in the alleged incident.
Judicial Watch reports:
On October 29, 2020, a person whose name is redacted emails a Secret Service official in the “PID” (Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division) with a link to a Blaze article published earlier that day, reporting that Hallie Biden had taken a handgun owned by Hunter Biden in October 2018 and thrown it into a supermarket trash bin. The official then forwards the article to another official in the PID.
An official whose name is redacted later comments in this chain: “Oh dear…”
After being forwarded the same Blaze article, an unidentified Protective Intelligence Research Specialist responds to his colleagues: “It's kind of odd that we were involved in the missing gun investigation when neither Hunter or Joe were even receiving USSS [Secret Service] protection at the time? Hmmm.” Another official replies: “Maybe we were asked for a favor?”
Senior Secret Service officials, whose names were disclosed in the records, were also notified of The Blaze article on November 2, 2020, including James Henry, then-Special Agent in Charge of the Philadelphia Field Office; Michael D'Ambrosio, Assistant Director of the U.S. Secret Service in charge of oversight of all Secret Service domestic and foreign Secret Service offices; Steven Stanford, then-Deputy Assistant Director; Leonza Newsome III, then-Deputy Director; and Douglas Henderson, Deputy Assistant Director, Office of Investigations.
After The Blaze article was forwarded by James Henry to a colleague in the Wilmington, DE, office, whose name is redacted, the colleague responds to Henry: “Digging in now. There is more information but I don't have it yet.”
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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I can only imagine how they would have smeared Trump and or his family had they done something this suspicious. Sec. Service would not have held it for 2 yrs that’s for sure.
“Asked for a favor” — sounds more to me they were asked to interfer in a Federal election which is a Federal crime. All those involved need to be fired then indicted. I knew America was headed in the wrong direction when I came home from Vietnam and saw what was happening, I never thought it would be at the bottom of the corruption pike. The lowest of the low.
Wait, what, are you speculating that slow joe used his political position to try to curry special treatment? Why, I am shocked, shocked I tell ya. Why the very idea that he is even the least bit crooked is very disturbing. Do I really need to add a sarc tag?
i don’t know why anybody would be surprised that the Biden administration has corrupted the Secret Service, when they have corrupted every OTHER part of the government they have touched.