Taxpayers paid more than $4.5M on Secret Service protection for Hunter Biden in 2021

A new report shows that the Secret Service spent more than $4.5 million between 2021 and 2022 protecting Hunter Biden while he was living in his $6 million home in Malibu, California.

According to financial transactions obtained by the Daily Mail through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the agency spent nearly $30,000 a month to rent out the property next to the president's son.

The report also noted that the agency spent more than $2.8 million on government credit cards, $1.12 spent on hotel rooms, and $632,071 was spent on rental cars. In total, the agency spent $4,596,747 to protect the president's son during that time, not including the cost to pay the agents.

After it was revealed in April 2022 that the agency was paying $30,000 a month to rent Hunter's neighbor's house, retired Secret Service agent Don Mihalek told ABC that the agency renting out property for its employees is "the cost of doing business for the Secret Service."

"Typically, wherever a protectee sets up their residence, the Secret Service is forced to find someplace to rent nearby at market value," he added. "The Service has had to do this in past administrations, and unfortunately, the housing market right now has driven the prices up substantially."

On Friday, a US District Judge denied Biden's attempt to have gun charges dismissed after trying to argue the case was politically motivated. The president's son was also charged with nine federal tax charges, where he pleaded not guilty in Los Angeles federal court in January.

He was charged by a federal grand jury in California with evasion of a tax assessment, failure to file and pay taxes, and filing a false or fraudulent tax return. The indictment contained his years of substance abuse, extravagant spending, and violations of federal tax regulations.

The indictment claimed that Hunter "engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019, from in or about January 2017 through in or about October 15, 2020, and to evade the assessment of taxes for the tax year 2018 when he filed false returns in or about February 2020."