WASHINGTON, D.C. - A Washington, D.C. grand jury indicted former President Donald Trump for allegedly playing fast and loose with documents from his presidency, citing alleged interference from the National Archives.
Those documents appeared to be legitimately tied to Trump’s duties as president. The New York Post reported that the National Archives has nearly 5,400 emails, electronic records, and documents that seem to prove Joe Biden was using pseudonyms and fake email addresses during his term as vice president.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) responded to a June 2022 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF), a nonprofit constitutional organization.
The request centered around emails from accounts of men named Robin Ware, Robert L. Peters, and JRB Ware—all pseudonyms Biden used during his term as vice president under Barack Obama.
Now, the Southeastern Legal Foundation has filed suit against the NARA seeking the release of the records, which the group believes will prove that Biden provided government information to, and discussed government business with, his son Hunter and others.
“All too often, public officials abuse their power by using it for personal or political benefit. When they do, many seek to hide it. The only way to preserve governmental integrity is for NARA to release Biden’s nearly 5,400 emails to SLF and, thus, the public. The American public deserves to know what is in them,” Kimberly Hermann, SLF general counsel, said in a statement.
SLF has slammed the National Archives, accusing them of having “dragged its feet” since the initial June 2022 FOIA request. Furthermore, the Archives, which is supposed to be apolitical, has not produced even one email since the agency acknowledged their existence days after the request.
In a June 24, 2022, letter to SLF, Stephannie Oriabure, director of NARA’s archival operations division, wrote, “We have performed a search of our collection for Vice Presidential records related to your [June 9, 2022] request and have identified approximately 5,138 email messages, 25 electronic files, and 200 pages of potentially responsive records that must be processed in order to respond to your request.”
Congress has also gotten involved. In August, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote NARA and demanded they turn over any unredacted records in which Biden used a pseudonym during his two terms as vice president. House Republicans are probing what role Joe Biden played in Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.
Previously released emails from the Archives and information retrieved from Hunter Biden’s infamous abandoned laptop showed that Joe Biden used the phony email address “Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov while serving as Obama’s vice president. In addition, Biden’s aide, John Flynn, copied Hunter Biden on ten emails containing his father’s schedule between May and June 15, 2016.
“Joe Biden has stated there was ‘an absolute wall’ between his family’s foreign business schemes and his duties as Vice President, but evidence reveals that access was wide open for his family’s influence peddling,” Comer said in an Aug. 17 statement. "The National Archives must provide these unredacted records to further our investigation into the Biden family’s corruption.”
SLF is based in Georgia and defines its mission as “dedicated to defending liberty and Rebuilding the American Republic.”
Constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley believes Biden may have some issues concerning bogus email names. Turley wrote in an op-ed on The Hill that although the practices aren’t unprecedented, it is somewhat unusual. However, most such incidents appeared to have occurred during the Obama administration.
For example, Obama Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch used pseudonyms. Former White House press secretary Jay Carney defended the practice, assuring the public that such emails were still subject to FOIA and congressional inquiries. However, he added, “We do not use, and should not use, private email accounts for work.”
However, in the case of Biden, “work” was certainly being discussed in some of the questionable emails, “including foreign travel plans and the hiring of associates of Hunter for high-level positions,” Turley wrote. The other issue that Biden faces is that some of the emails are relevant to Hunter Biden clients, people whom Joe Biden said he knew nothing about.
Congressional Republicans are probing over $20 million that found itself somewhat mysteriously transferred to members of the Biden family, including grandchildren, emanating from foreign sources through a series of shell companies. Turley noted that even the Washington Post was forced to admit Joe Biden lied about certain aspects of his son’s business dealings.
One of Hunter Biden’s close business associates, Devon Archer, recently stated that Joe Biden’s denial of Hunter’s business dealings is “categorically false.”
Turley noted the House Oversight Committee has “hit a wall” in trying to obtain material from the Biden administration, and NARA has been slow-walking their requests for documents.
It would be easy, Turley argues, for Biden and Obama to allow the release of the emails, especially if, as has been alleged, the use of aliases is not unusual. He notes that if Biden (and Obama, for that matter) claim the emails are “trivial” or relate to personal issues, she said transparency would be the best thing to put any suspicions to rest. Refusing to release the emails containing the pseudonyms lends doubt to the possibility that Biden was indeed using his office for personal gain.
The abandoned laptop appears to be a smoking gun about Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter Biden’s business dealings. Turley notes that in one email, an associate of Joe Biden told Tony Bobulinski, a Hunter Biden business partner, to make no mention of Joe Biden where it concerns any transactions.
“Don’t mention Joe being involved,” he wrote, “It’s only when u [sic] are face to face; I know u [sic] know that but they are paranoid.” Joe Biden was, therefore, referred to as the “Big Guy,” later emails show.
Concerning the pseudonyms, Congress made one discovery, Turley notes, where staffers used Biden’s fake government email, Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov, to send a message about a meeting with then-Ukrainian president Poroshenko, cc’d to Hunter Biden.
Turley notes that under the Presidential Records Act, NARA could use that statute to enforce the refusal of Obama and Biden to release the emails.
However, Turley notes, special access to presidential records is allowed under the Act “to…Congress” and “to the extent of matter within its jurisdiction, to any committee…if such records contain information that is needed for the conduct of its business and that is not otherwise available.” Turley writes that any refusal by Obama and Biden would block Congress from obtaining crucial evidence for a corruption investigation or an impeachment inquiry.
Those documents appeared to be legitimately tied to Trump’s duties as president. The New York Post reported that the National Archives has nearly 5,400 emails, electronic records, and documents that seem to prove Joe Biden was using pseudonyms and fake email addresses during his term as vice president.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) responded to a June 2022 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF), a nonprofit constitutional organization.
The request centered around emails from accounts of men named Robin Ware, Robert L. Peters, and JRB Ware—all pseudonyms Biden used during his term as vice president under Barack Obama.
Now, the Southeastern Legal Foundation has filed suit against the NARA seeking the release of the records, which the group believes will prove that Biden provided government information to, and discussed government business with, his son Hunter and others.
“All too often, public officials abuse their power by using it for personal or political benefit. When they do, many seek to hide it. The only way to preserve governmental integrity is for NARA to release Biden’s nearly 5,400 emails to SLF and, thus, the public. The American public deserves to know what is in them,” Kimberly Hermann, SLF general counsel, said in a statement.
SLF has slammed the National Archives, accusing them of having “dragged its feet” since the initial June 2022 FOIA request. Furthermore, the Archives, which is supposed to be apolitical, has not produced even one email since the agency acknowledged their existence days after the request.
In a June 24, 2022, letter to SLF, Stephannie Oriabure, director of NARA’s archival operations division, wrote, “We have performed a search of our collection for Vice Presidential records related to your [June 9, 2022] request and have identified approximately 5,138 email messages, 25 electronic files, and 200 pages of potentially responsive records that must be processed in order to respond to your request.”
Congress has also gotten involved. In August, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote NARA and demanded they turn over any unredacted records in which Biden used a pseudonym during his two terms as vice president. House Republicans are probing what role Joe Biden played in Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.
Previously released emails from the Archives and information retrieved from Hunter Biden’s infamous abandoned laptop showed that Joe Biden used the phony email address “Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov while serving as Obama’s vice president. In addition, Biden’s aide, John Flynn, copied Hunter Biden on ten emails containing his father’s schedule between May and June 15, 2016.
“Joe Biden has stated there was ‘an absolute wall’ between his family’s foreign business schemes and his duties as Vice President, but evidence reveals that access was wide open for his family’s influence peddling,” Comer said in an Aug. 17 statement. "The National Archives must provide these unredacted records to further our investigation into the Biden family’s corruption.”
SLF is based in Georgia and defines its mission as “dedicated to defending liberty and Rebuilding the American Republic.”
Constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley believes Biden may have some issues concerning bogus email names. Turley wrote in an op-ed on The Hill that although the practices aren’t unprecedented, it is somewhat unusual. However, most such incidents appeared to have occurred during the Obama administration.
For example, Obama Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch used pseudonyms. Former White House press secretary Jay Carney defended the practice, assuring the public that such emails were still subject to FOIA and congressional inquiries. However, he added, “We do not use, and should not use, private email accounts for work.”
However, in the case of Biden, “work” was certainly being discussed in some of the questionable emails, “including foreign travel plans and the hiring of associates of Hunter for high-level positions,” Turley wrote. The other issue that Biden faces is that some of the emails are relevant to Hunter Biden clients, people whom Joe Biden said he knew nothing about.
Congressional Republicans are probing over $20 million that found itself somewhat mysteriously transferred to members of the Biden family, including grandchildren, emanating from foreign sources through a series of shell companies. Turley noted that even the Washington Post was forced to admit Joe Biden lied about certain aspects of his son’s business dealings.
One of Hunter Biden’s close business associates, Devon Archer, recently stated that Joe Biden’s denial of Hunter’s business dealings is “categorically false.”
Turley noted the House Oversight Committee has “hit a wall” in trying to obtain material from the Biden administration, and NARA has been slow-walking their requests for documents.
It would be easy, Turley argues, for Biden and Obama to allow the release of the emails, especially if, as has been alleged, the use of aliases is not unusual. He notes that if Biden (and Obama, for that matter) claim the emails are “trivial” or relate to personal issues, she said transparency would be the best thing to put any suspicions to rest. Refusing to release the emails containing the pseudonyms lends doubt to the possibility that Biden was indeed using his office for personal gain.
The abandoned laptop appears to be a smoking gun about Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter Biden’s business dealings. Turley notes that in one email, an associate of Joe Biden told Tony Bobulinski, a Hunter Biden business partner, to make no mention of Joe Biden where it concerns any transactions.
“Don’t mention Joe being involved,” he wrote, “It’s only when u [sic] are face to face; I know u [sic] know that but they are paranoid.” Joe Biden was, therefore, referred to as the “Big Guy,” later emails show.
Concerning the pseudonyms, Congress made one discovery, Turley notes, where staffers used Biden’s fake government email, Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov, to send a message about a meeting with then-Ukrainian president Poroshenko, cc’d to Hunter Biden.
Turley notes that under the Presidential Records Act, NARA could use that statute to enforce the refusal of Obama and Biden to release the emails.
However, Turley notes, special access to presidential records is allowed under the Act “to…Congress” and “to the extent of matter within its jurisdiction, to any committee…if such records contain information that is needed for the conduct of its business and that is not otherwise available.” Turley writes that any refusal by Obama and Biden would block Congress from obtaining crucial evidence for a corruption investigation or an impeachment inquiry.
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