A news report this week might have revealed why President Joe Biden is so obsessed with gun control. If his son, Hunter, gets his hands on one, he might shoot himself in the foot. Or it might wind up in a trash can where a kid could find it.
The latter, Politico reported on Thursday, is about what happened when Hunter’s then-wife found a handgun in his truck and tossed it away behind a grocery. The store is across the street from a high school.
Politico’s report adds new details to a story The Blaze published before the presidential election.
The Secret Service tried to get the transaction record from the store where Hunter bought the gun. That record showed that he lied about his drug use.
Recycled .38
“The incident began when Hallie searched Hunter’s pickup, which was parked at her home in Wilmington, because of unspecified ‘suspicions she had,’ according to the Delaware State Police report. Inside the truck, she found a .38 revolver,” the website reported.
Hallie went off half-cocked.
She “took the gun to Janssen’s Market, a nearby high-end grocery store where the Bidens are longtime regular customers. There, she tossed the gun, wrapped in a black shopping bag, into a trash bin outside of the store.”
Later on, Hallie confessed to Hunter, who told her to return to the store and get the gun.
Problem was, the gun was gone.
Hallie reported the missing .38 to the store, which in turn called the cops, who rushed to the scene. What, they must have wondered, did Hunter do this time? They worried that it was left near a school, or might be used in a crime, Politico reported.
A couple days later, “an older man who regularly rummages through the grocery’s store’s trash to collect recyclable items” returned it, but at the time, Hunter tried to finger two Mexicans as having it:
At one point, two of Janssen’s employees, described by the police report as “Mexican males,” walked past the loading dock area, and Hunter told a police officer that the store had some suspicious people working for it. Asked if he was referring to those two staffers, Hunter responded, “Yea, prolly illegal,” according to the report.
Undoubtedly, Hunter misspoke. He surely meant “prolly undocumented,” but in any event “when a police officer asked Hunter whether the gun had been used in a crime, the officer reported that Hunter ‘became very agitated with me and asked me if I was intentionally trying to make him mad,’” the report said:
When the officer asked Hunter whether he had been doing drugs or drinking heavily, he responded, “Listen, it isn’t like that. I think she believes I was gonna kill myself,” according to the report.
As the police grilled Hallie and Hunter, two Secret Service agents showed up at the store where Hunter bought the piece. They flashed badges and identification at the owner, and asked for the transaction record. The owner refused because the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives controls those records. ATF showed up later for a look.
Unsurprisingly, Hunter lied on the form, which Politico obtained:
Hunter responded “no” to a question on the transaction record that asks, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” Five years earlier, he had been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine, and he and family members have spoken about his history of drug use.
Nothing to See Here
Also unsurprisingly, Politico’s reporters hit a stone wall when they asked about the matter. ATF referred them to Delaware State Police, which demanded a written Freedom of Information request. The agency rejected such a request in November.
“The incident has received scant attention, save for a report on the conservative website The Blaze that focused on the state police decision not to file charges against either Hunter or Hallie,” Politico reported.
Of course, the Secret Service has no records pertaining to the matter.
“U.S. Secret Service records confirm that the agency did not provide protection to any member of the Biden family in 2018, and that the Secret Service had no involvement in this alleged incident,” the agency told Politico.
That isn’t quite true, according to one source referenced by Politico:
One law enforcement official said that at the time of the incident, individual Secret Service agents at the agency’s offices in Wilmington, Del., and Philadelphia kept an informal hand in maintaining the former vice president’s security. The person cited an instance in 2019 when the Wilmington office of the Secret Service called the Delaware State Police to arrange security for a public appearance by Biden.
Law enforcement officials told Politico that involvement by the Secret Service would have been inappropriate.
