House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) sent a letter to the National Archives and Records Administration requesting unrestricted special access to unredacted emails and documents from Joe Biden’s time as vice president regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma.
Comer, who has been investigating President Joe Biden and his involvement in his family's overseas business dealings since the beginning of this Congress, is requesting the emails that were released by the agency earlier this year that pertain to Hunter Biden and Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company where the president’s son was a board member.
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Specifically, Comer is requesting the unredacted version of all emails released by the National Archives under “Case Number 2023-0022-F,” which is titled on NARA’s website as “Email Messages To and/or From Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden related to Burisma and Ukraine.”
The emails released under this category were heavily redacted and provided little context. However, the senders and who received the emails are public. For example, Hunter Biden, Antony Blinken, Beau Biden (Joe Biden’s late son), and Joe Biden himself are on the emails.
Comer specifically references an email from May 26, 2016, with the subject line “Friday Schedule Card.” This email references a “9am phone call with Pres Poroshenko,” referring to President Petro Poroshenko, who was then the president of Ukraine. The email was sent to “Robert L. Peters,” a name which has been reported was a pseudonym then-Vice President Joe Biden sometimes used when sending emails. In addition, Hunter Biden was cc’d on the email.
The withdrawal form shows that the redaction was made in part because it contained a “personal phone number.”
“It is concerning to the Committee, however, that this document was sent to 'Robert L. Peters'—a pseudonym the Committee has identified as then Vice- President Biden,” Comer’s letter reads. “Additionally, the Committee questions why the then-Vice President’s son, Hunter Biden—and only Hunter Biden—was copied on this email to then-Vice President Biden.”
In addition, the Oversight Committee is also requesting any document or communication in which a pseudonym for then-Vice President Joe Biden was used. According to reports, Biden occasionally used the names "Robert L. Peters," "Robin Ware," and "JRB Ware" when sending emails for both official and personal business. The committee also requests any document or communication in which Hunter Biden or his former business associates, Eric Schwerin or Devon Archer, were included.
Comer also wants a copy of all the “drafts from November 1, 2015 to December 9, 2015 of then-Vice President Biden’s speech delivered to the Ukrainian Rada” on Dec. 8, 2015.
Biden's speech focused on how corrupt Viktor Shokin, Ukraine’s prosecutor general at the time, was.
“But I can tell you, you cannot name me a single democracy in the world where the cancer of corruption is prevalent,” Joe Biden told Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada on Dec. 8, 2015. “You cannot name me one. They are thoroughly inconsistent. And it’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption. The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.”
Biden was originally planning to unveil an extra $1 billion in loan guarantees to help Ukraine’s economy rebuild and focus his speech on that. But he changed his mind en route to Kyiv, the Washington Examiner previously reported. This is seemingly why Comer wants the drafts of the speech.
The speech was just days after Hunter Biden was pressured by Mykola Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma, to “call D.C.” and get Shokin off their back, according to testimony before the Oversight Committee from Archer, who presumed that “D.C.” was referring to Joe Biden, but he could not be certain.
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“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 a statement. “We already have evidence of then-Vice President Biden speaking, dining, and having coffee with his son’s foreign business associates. We also know that Hunter Biden and his associates were informed of then-Vice President Biden’s official government duties in countries where they had a financial interest. The National Archives must provide these unredacted records to further our investigation into the Biden family’s corruption.”
Comer asks that the documents be provided to the committee no later than Aug. 31.