Republicans Slam Secret Service Using $30,000 Per Month Rental House to Protect Hunter Biden

A Republican lawmaker has taken a swipe at reports about US Secret Service agents paying a hefty sum to use a California rental house as a command post to protect Hunter Biden.

Darrell Issa, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, tweeted that "[…] looks like the cost of protecting Hunter is being shared by Big Tech, the mainstream media […] and now the taxpayers as well".

The remarks followed ABC News reporting on Monday that the Secret Service spends more than $30,000 per month to rent the said property in California to protect the president's son who lives in a luxury estate in Malibu.

According to the report, the Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting high-ranking officials and members of their families, is renting a Spanish-style home next to the four-bedroom property Hunter Biden has lived in for the past year.

ABC News cited former Secret Service officer Don Mihalek as saying that the agency has an obligation to protect the president and his family and typically rents an estate in close proximity to the place where the protectee lives. He added that the agency had to do this in past administrations, bemoaning that the housing market right now has driven prices up substantially.

Members of the Biden family, including Hunter, began to receive 24-hour protection when Joe Biden became the Democratic Party's presidential nominee in June of 2020.

The report comes after Republican congressmen said last week that they are ready to subpoena Hunter Biden and question him on his business dealings abroad as well as the extent of the current US president's alleged involvement if the GOP regains a majority in Congress.

"We will subpoena Hunter Biden. It should concern every American that they did this for the Biden family's financial gain, which came at the cost of our national security", House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik said, adding that "the American people absolutely deserve answers".

This was preceded by Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rand Paul (R-KY) announcing plans to investigate the Biden family if the GOP retakes Congress after the midterm elections in November. In addition, Darrell Issa (R-CA) wrote letters to White House press secretary Jen Psaki, chief of staff Ronald Klain as well as multiple former US intelligence officials, demanding that they preserve all Hunter Biden-related records.

Hunter Biden's 'Laptop From Hell' Story

In October 2020, the New York Post (NYP) published an article which exposed alleged corruption by the former vice president's son and apparent involvement of Joe Biden in Hunter's business deals.

The article referred to Hunter Biden's alleged laptop which contained a trove of potentially damning documents and was described by then-President Donald Trump as "the laptop from hell", a device that was reportedly abandoned by Joe Biden's son at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019. The younger Biden finally admitted that the laptop could have "absolutely" belonged to him, but added that he had never taken it to an IT store and claimed the device was perhaps stolen or hacked by Russian intelligence.

In the piece, the NYP mentioned two alleged emails that Hunter Biden purportedly received from a top official at the Ukrainian company Burisma while he was on the board of the firm.

In a May 2014 email, Burisma board adviser Vadym Pozharskyi purportedly asked Joe Biden's son to "use [his] influence" to politically support the Ukrainian company, while in another one dated April 2015, Pozharskyi thanked the younger Biden for arranging a meeting with his father, then-US Vice President Joe Biden.

POTUS has repeatedly rejected claims that he was in the know about his son's work and financial gains.

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