House lawmakers investigating President Biden are seeking access to some of Mr. Biden’s emails from his time as vice president and all drafts of a speech he delivered to Ukraine lawmakers in 2015 when his son had a high-paying job on the board of a Ukraine energy firm.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee has sent a letter to the National Archives and Records Administration asking for the records.
It marks the first move by lawmakers to gather material directly from Mr. Biden for their probe of his involvement in his son Hunter Biden’s lucrative foreign business deals.
Lawmakers estimate the deals provided up to 10 Biden family members and associates at least $20 million, but none of the money has been directly linked to the president.
“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,” House Oversight Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican, said. “The National Archives must provide these unredacted records to further our investigation into the Biden family’s corruption.”
The letter to the National Archives follows newly released bank records that document how the Biden family and associates collected millions of dollars from Russian, Kazakh and Ukrainian oligarchs while Mr. Biden was serving as vice president. And it follows testimony from Hunter Biden’s ex-business partner Devon Archer that the then-vice president attended two of Hunter Biden’s business dinners and phoned into 20 meetings he was holding with business associates.
The Washington Times reported in July that the National Archives had released a White House scheduling email sent on May 26, 2016, to then-Vice President Biden ahead of a call with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The email recipients included Hunter Biden, who at the time was serving on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, which was looking to shake off a state-run corruption probe.
Mr. Comer is seeking that specific email from the National Archives along with unredacted versions of several others that were only partially disclosed by the archives and which also copied in Hunter Biden, including a scheduling card.
Mr. Comer is also seeking all of Mr. Biden’s official vice presidential emails and documents that were copied to Archer and Eric Schwerin, another of Hunter Biden’s business associates.
Archer is currently facing a year in prison on an unrelated securities fraud conviction.
Mr. Comer also wants copies of all documents or communications that used a pseudonym for Mr. Biden while he was serving as vice president, a practice he called “concerning.”
The email about the Poroshenko call was sent to Mr. Biden under the pseudonym Robert L. Peters. Mr. Biden is known to have used other pseudonyms, including Robin Ware and JRB Ware.
In the May 2016 call to Mr. Poroshenko, Mr. Biden urged him to continue reforming Ukraine’s prosecutor general office. It’s unclear whether Hunter Biden was involved in the call outside of getting looped in on his father’s email about it.
The timing of the call, however, coincides with Hunter Biden’s $1 million-a-year job on the board for Burisma. According to Archer, Burisma hired Hunter Biden to help dodge charges from the Ukrainian General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
Mr. Shokin was fired in March 2016 and Mr. Biden bragged on camera in 2018 that he forced Mr. Shokin’s ouster by threatening the government he would withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if they didn’t fire him.
Mr. Comer’s request seeks drafts of then-Vice President Biden’s Dec. 9, 2015, speech in Kyiv to the Ukrainian Parliament.
Mr. Biden, in the speech, urges Ukraine to end corruption in the country, warning if they did not, it could cost them international support.
“And it’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption,” Mr. Biden said in the speech. “The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.”
Three months later, Mr. Shokin was fired.
Mr. Comer told the National Archives his panel seeks the records because it is working on legislation “aimed at deficiencies it has identified in the current legal framework regarding ethics laws and disclosure of financial interests related to the immediate family of Vice Presidents and Presidents — deficiencies that may place American national security and interests at risk.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.