WASHINGTON — President Trump said he would “look” into revoking Hunter Biden’s Secret Service security detail on Monday after the former first son, surrounded by more than a dozen agents, was spotted on an “ultra-luxurious” getaway in South Africa when he was due for a deposition in court.
“I would say if there are 18 [Secret Service agents] with Hunter Biden, that will be something I look at this afternoon,” Trump said at the Kennedy Center when asked by a reporter about the taxpayer-funded visit.
Former President Joe Biden’s son was staying in a $500-a-night villa in Cape Town, described on its website as an “ultra-luxurious designer home with spectacular 180 degrees unobstructed views of the sea.”
President Trump said he would “look into” revoking Hunter Biden’s Secret Service security detail. REUTERS
The president was told about the former first son having 18 agents protecting him on a lux trip to South Africa. Rafael Fontoura for NY Post
But a federal judge granted the Biden scion’s bid to drop his lawsuit against former White House aide Garrett Ziegler — whose nonprofit Marco Polo digitized his infamous “Laptop from Hell” and put its embarrassing contents online — after he had departed for South Africa, photos show.
Hunter, 54, had cried poor before the ruling last Friday, saying no one is buying his memoir or art and that he and his family were forced to relocate from their Malibu rental home after wildfires.
But photos showed him waltzing around Cape Town, shopping with his South African-born wife Melissa Cohen and holing up at the ritzy resort with his federal entourage.
Former President Joe Biden extended secret service protection to his son in the final weeks of his tenure at the White House. YURI GRIPAS/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Ziegler told The Post on Monday that Hunter had “fled the country” — and “worse than that, US taxpayers are footing the bill for it.”
“Trump should strip his Secret Service protection, which he is not entitled to, and make Joe Biden, who is collecting three handsome federal pensions, foot the bill,” Ziegler said.
The ex-White House aide also noted that Trump should consider relieving from “his duties immediately” federal prosecutor Derek Hines, who worked on Hunter’s twin criminal cases.
The Post reported over the weekend about Biden’s trip to South Africa, flanked with security detail provided by the US government — and paid for by taxpayer dollars. REUTERS
Hines served under former special counsel David Weiss in Delaware on the cases charging Hunter Biden with tax fraud and gun crimes — and was promoted last week to first assistant US attorney in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Secret Service protection doesn’t automatically extend to adult children of presidents, but Hunter was directed to be given a special detail by his father, Trump administration sources said.
Trump, 78, also expressed displeasure at Hunter being in South Africa after his administration halted foreign aid to the country due to the government taking away land from farmers as an Apartheid reparations measure.
“South Africa, you know, is on a watch list. You know that, yes, because what they’re doing to people is brutal, and I’ve stopped having money go to South Africa. You know that’s billions of dollars,” Trump said.
“So he’s in South Africa. That’s really interesting. All right, I’m going to take a look at that.”
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told The Post on Friday that Hunter Biden was indeed given Secret Service protection, but would not confirm the number of agents that accompanied him on the trip.
Trump scrapped Secret Service details for his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his former national security adviser John Bolton, among others, after taking office.
“When you have protection, you can’t have it for the rest of your life,” Trump told reporters back in January.
“Do you want to have a large detail of people guarding people for the rest of their lives?” he asked. “I mean, there’s risks to everything.”
