Biden exchanged up to 82K pages of emails under pseudonyms while VP: lawsuit
President Biden sent or received up to 82,000 pages worth of private emails while serving as Barack Obama’s vice president, the National Archives disclosed late Monday as part of a lawsuit brought by a conservative organization.
The Archives revealed that the trove of correspondence spanned all eight years of Biden’s vice presidency and included messages to or from three shadow email addresses: “robinware456@gmail.com,” “JRBWare@gmail.com” and “Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov,” according to a joint filing with the Georgia-based Southeastern Legal Foundation.
“The fact that as vice-president, Joe Biden sent 82,000 pages of emails from alias email addresses is shocking,” Southeastern Legal Foundation General Counsel Kimberly Hermann told The Post.
“The American public has a right to know what is in those emails. SLF remains hopeful that now that we have confirmed that the emails exist, NARA will fulfill its legal obligation and produce them in a timely and transparent manner.”
It is unclear what topics are covered in most of the emails or who else was looped in on the messages.
However, at least 10 missives were sent between May 18 and June 15, 2016, and cc’d first son Hunter Biden — with one on May 26 notifying Hunter of a scheduled phone call the next day between the vice president and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, the first son’s abandoned laptop shows.
Then-vice presidential aide John Flynn included Hunter on the missives in the months following Joe Biden’s threat in December 2015 to withhold $1 billion in US loan guarantees from Kyiv unless Poroshenko fired Ukrainian Prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma Holdings owner Mykola Zlochevsky.
The president’s son served on the Ukrainian natural gas company’s board from 2014 to 2019, earning an annual salary of roughly $1 million — despite having no prior experience in the energy industry.
Ukraine’s parliament dismissed Shokin in March 2016.
The Southeastern Legal Foundation sued the National Archives in August as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to determine the degree to which Biden discussed government affairs with his son and others.
That same month, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) also demanded the Archives turn over unredacted copies of the former vice president’s pseudonymous correspondence involving his son.
On Sept. 12, House Republicans began an impeachment inquiry into the president, which will determine whether Biden in his former or current role either abused his office or benefited from his son’s overseas business dealings.
Congressional Republicans this year have revealed the existence of a confidential FBI file from a credible source alleging that Zlochevksy also paid a $10 million bribe to the now-president and his son amid Shokin’s probe.
Former Hunter business partner Devon Archer testified to the Oversight Committee in July that Joe Biden spoke with his son’s business associates at least 20 times on the phone and that Hunter was placed on Burisma’s board because of his family’s “brand.”
“The National Archives has identified 82,000 pages of emails where then-Vice President Joe Biden used a fake name, but the Biden White House has only cleared 14 pages in response to multiple Oversight Committee requests for documents related to then-Vice President Biden,” Comer told The Post in a statement.
“This lack of transparency from the self-identified ‘most transparent administration in history’ is looking more like obstruction every day. Congress needs full access to these records and others as part of our investigation into Joe Biden and the Biden family’s corruption. The House Oversight Committee will continue to use the power of the gavel to obtain records necessary to our investigation.”
According to Monday’s filing, the Archives has “completed a search for potentially responsive documents” and will produce “non-exempt” files “on a monthly rolling basis” going forward.
“Given the scope of Plaintiff’s FOIA request, which seeks copies of all emails in three separate accounts over an eight-year period, the volume of potentially responsive records is necessarily large,” the filing in the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia states.
The National Archives and Southeastern Legal Foundation are also in talks “to narrow the FOIA request in efforts to resolve this matter more expeditiously.”
The parties have asked US District Judge Leigh Martin May to order a joint status report deadline of Dec. 8 on the status of tailoring the initial FOIA request, the “rates of processing and production of the documents” and “proposals for next steps in the case.”
By comparison, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held at least 33,000 emails on her personal server before deleting them.
