Trump Pulls Secret Service Protection From Hunter and Ashley Biden
by https://www.nytimes.com/by/shawn-mccreesh · NY TimesTrump Pulls Secret Service Protection From Hunter and Ashley Biden
The president posted on social media that Hunter Biden would lose his security detail “effective immediately” and also identified the country he was vacationing in.
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Credit...Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times
Reporting from Washington
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President Trump said on Monday evening that he was ending Secret Service protection for former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son Hunter and daughter Ashley.
Not only did Mr. Trump declare in a social media post that Hunter Biden — who has been a Trump target for years — would lose his protection “effective immediately,” he mentioned his whereabouts: “He is currently vacationing in, of all places, South Africa, where the Human Rights of people has been strenuously questioned.”
The post merged two of Mr. Trump’s recent fixations: He has talked constantly about his predecessor and the Biden family since returning to office. And he has talked a lot lately about what he sees as the plight of white farmers in post-apartheid South Africa.
Mr. Trump’s post on Monday blending both subjects came after The New York Post (a publication he reads closely) published an opinion article on Sunday about Mr. Biden’s South African vacation and his security detail.
On Monday afternoon, a reporter asked Mr. Trump about the topic as he was touring the Kennedy Center. “I just heard about it for the first time,” Mr. Trump said. He added that it was “really interesting” and that he planned to “take a look at it.”
A few hours later, he made his post.
He has been on a revenge tour since he returned to the Oval Office, and he has several times exerted his power to revoke Secret Service protection from perceived enemies. His animus toward the Biden family is in part what motivated the former president to pardon his son.
Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said on Monday evening: “We are aware of the president’s decision to terminate protection for Hunter and Ashley Biden. The Secret Service will comply and is actively working with the protective details and the White House to ensure compliance as soon as possible.”
A representative for the Biden family declined to comment Monday.
This latest setback for Hunter Biden came days after he told a judge that he had “suffered a significant downturn in his income and has significant debt in the millions of dollars range” and therefore could not continue with a lawsuit against a former Trump aide.
In December, President Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son, who has faced years of legal troubles, including pleading guilty to charges of tax evasion and being convicted on federal charges related to his purchase of a handgun.
In February, Mr. Trump said he would revoke the former President Biden’s security clearance and his access to daily intelligence. Mr. Trump also said last month that he would nix security clearances for Antony Blinken, the former secretary of state; and Jake Sullivan, the former national security adviser.
Mr. Trump stripped the security detail of one of his own former national security advisers, John Bolton, within hours of taking office, and later did the same to Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, and a former aide, Brian Hook, even though all three men remain, like Mr. Trump himself, under personal threat of attack from Iran for actions they took during the first Trump presidency.
Even some of Mr. Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill were unnerved by the rush of security revocations. Two Republican senators, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, urged him to reconsider.