Secret Service Says No Records Of Biden’s Delaware Visitors Exist
The United States Secret Service has admitted that no records exist of who President Joe Biden has met with at his Delaware home.
The agency said on Wednesday that no records exist of those visits as a New York Post Freedom of Information Act request was denied, Fox News reported.
In a letter dated September 27, Secret Service deputy director Faron Paramore wrote, “the agency conducted an additional search of relevant program offices for potentially responsive records,” according to the paper.
“This search also produced no responsive records,” the letter read. “Accordingly, your appeal is denied.”
The denial is the latest in a series of developments involving Biden’s records.
In a March 2010 email reviewed by Fox New Digital, the office of then-Vice President Biden expressed concerns about the University of Delaware’s terms for the “deed of gift” for his Senate papers “due to the political sensitivities” that could arise from releasing the papers to the public.
The email went on to list some sections that needed to be reviewed, including “Property ownership,” “Timing of archival processing and public release,” “Opportunity for review prior to release,” and “Scope.”
In April the Secret Service said it did not have any records of who President Joe Biden meets with when he is at his home in Delaware, where he has spent considerable time during his presidency.
He has spent around a quarter of his first year as president at his residences in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, but not much is known about any official meetings he has had or any lobbying efforts that took place, The New York Post reported.
The Post sought more than one year of visitor log records, including for Biden’s first year in office, but Secret Service Freedom of Information Act officer Kevin Tyrrell wrote in a response dated Monday that “[t]he Secret Service FOIA Office searched all Program Offices that were likely to contain potentially responsive records, and no records were located.”
First son Hunter Biden is under criminal investigation for possible tax fraud and unregistered foreign lobbying after routinely seeking business in countries where his father held sway as vice president. The younger Biden worked on some overseas projects with his uncle Jim Biden.
Documents and photos from a laptop that formerly belonged to Hunter Biden indicate that he introduced his dad to business associates from China, Mexico, Russia, and Ukraine — including at the vice president’s residence in Washington.
Biden was at one of his Delaware homes for 99 days during his first year in office, including for official business, such as an Oct. 24 breakfast where Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) lobbied centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) to support Biden’s Build Back Better Act social spending plan.
The president has said before that people who visit him, like family members, have influenced his thinking.
“I was sitting in my kitchen yesterday and here’s a sunroom off the kitchen and my wife was there with her sister and a good friend named Mary Ann,” he said. “And she was saying, ‘Do you realize it’s over $5 for a pound of hamburger meat? $5?’”
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) was successful in its efforts to get records pertaining to a visit by a Japanese delegation to former President Trump at Mar-a-lago.
“While we won access to those records, we never got much, as the Secret Service came out and said they were not vetting the president’s meetings, the Trump Organization was,” Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for the group said.
“I have not seen any reporting that there is a ton of official business and outside meetings being done when Biden goes to his personal residence in Delaware for the weekend, mainly just going to church,” Libowitz said. “If he were meeting with foreign heads of state at his house in Delaware, that would obviously be a different matter, though.”
Judicial Watch has sued for access to President Biden’s visitor’s log and accused the Secret Service of playing a “shell game.”
“Obviously the Secret Service knows and tracks who is visiting President Biden at his homes in Delaware and they are playing a shell game with the public to keep that information secret,” the group’s president, Tom Fitton, said.