Database Reveals Hunter Biden’s Foreign Visits Cost Taxpayers Nearly $200,000

(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, Pool)

FILE – This Dec. 4, 2013, file photo shows U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, left, arriving on Air Force Two in Beijing, China, with his son Hunter Biden, right, and his granddaughter Finnegan Biden. As the Vice President travels to Ukraine Saturday, June 7, 2014, his youngest son, Hunter, 44, has been hired by a private Ukrainian company that promotes energy independence from Russia, but is commercially active in the breakaway Russian-backed state of Crimea and owned by a former government minister with ties to Ukraine’s ousted pro-Russian president. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, Pool)

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Hunter Biden and his dad dodged a big one last week, when Hunter settled a case with the mother of his child for child support in Arkansas, thus alleviating the need for him to turn over to the court information on his finances which might have revealed interesting facts relevant to his work with a firm connected to Ukraine and another connected to China.

But there’s still a pending Senate investigation into issues surrounding Ukraine which is looking into his actions and those of his father in relation to Burisma as part of a broader look into Ukrainian questions.

Now, the Free Beacon is reporting some interesting facts about taxpayers paying for expenditures allegedly related to Hunter Biden’s Secret Service coverage abroad.

Now obviously, it’s normal for the Secret Service to provide coverage for the family of the president and Vice President. But the Free Beacon explained that expenditures for Hunter’s travel were, for example, more than all the four adult Trump children combined.

As Hunter Biden zipped across the globe for his business deals, taxpayers paid $193,696 for his Secret Service entourage, according to an official database that reports unclassified government expenditures. That amount is nearly four times the recorded security bill of the four adult Trump children—combined.

While his father Joe Biden was vice president, Hunter Biden traveled with a Secret Service entourage to at least 10 different countries, including China, Qatar, and South Africa, according to a government expenditure database. He racked up 28 separate bills, all of which involved taxpayer payments to a “miscellaneous foreign contractor” or “miscellaneous foreign awardee.” Many of the bills explicitly said that the money was used to pay for accommodations for the Secret Service, but others were scant on details.

With few details about Hunter Biden’s travels publicly disclosed, the database is far from a complete account of his foreign activities. The limited disclosures do shed light on the taxpayer burden of Hunter Biden’s lucrative global business career, which far eclipses the Secret Service costs for other presidential and vice-presidential family members disclosed in the database. George Mesires, Hunter Biden’s attorney, did not respond to a request for comment.

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Sean Moulton, a senior policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, said it was unclear why there was such a difference. He said it was possible Biden traveled more or went in larger groups, but he was unable to assess it without more details.

The Senate is looking into Hunter Biden’s travel records as part of their probe into potential conflicts of interest in regard to his father’s position in the administration.

The records aren’t clear about Hunter Biden’s travel in Ukraine, but it did show information for his travel to China. The record shows that before and after a December 2013 meeting related to his Chinese business connections (during which he also rode with his father on Air Force Two to China), a stay in June 2013, one in March 2014, it cost taxpayers almost $13,000.

When he visited the Philippines in 2013, he was allegedly working for disaster-stricken children with the World Food Program USA. But he and his Secret Service security stayed at the St. Regis Doha in Qatar, a luxury hotel that cost taxpayers roughly $11,000.

Moulton said the lack of transparency in the descriptions was “frustrating.”

“Sometimes there are security concerns for recipients of USA money (either contracts or aid) that require keeping them anonymous to protect them from possible reprisals from those unhappy with our country,” he said in an email. “But too often the convention is used for convenience because agencies may not have all of the information required to be reported for each foreign contractor.”

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This isn’t the first time that questions about the Biden family and the use of the Secret Service have come up.

While he was in office, Joe Biden charged rent for the Secret Service to stay at his property which cost taxpayers $171,600 between 2011 and 2017.

There was also the report about how Joe Biden’s swimming naked in his pool at his Delaware home troubled female agents, according to US News.

“Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude,” Kessler writes in the book – due for release Aug. 5.

“Female Secret Service agents find that offensive,” he writes.

“Biden likes to be revered as everyday Joe,” an unnamed agent told Kessler. “But the reality is no agents want to go on his detail because Biden makes agents’ lives so tough.”

In addition to the alleged skinny-dipping, agents are reportedly irritated by frequent last-minute trips to Delaware.

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