Biden Admin Allows James Comer To View Archived Emails Praising ‘Sexy’ Joe Biden And ‘Terrific’ Beau Biden
'These are the emails Joe Biden wants Americans to see'
National Archives admitted it possesses well over 5,000 emails involving the aliases Biden used while VP. It now faces a lawsuit and a Thursday deadline to turn them over to Congress.
A government watchdog group learned through a Freedom of Information Act request last summer that the National Archives and Records Administration was in possession of over 5,000 emails and electronic records involving fake names President Joe Biden appears to have operated under while wheeling and dealing during his time as vice president.
The primary fake names Biden reportedly used were Robin Ware, Robert L. Peters, and JRB Ware.
Despite admitting in a June 24, 2022, letter that documents exist involving accounts in these names in the Biden vice presidential records, NARA "has dragged its feet and still has not produced a single email," according to the Georgia-based Southeastern Legal Foundation.
In light of the National Archives' apparent failure to produce the records in a timely fashion, the SLF filed a federal lawsuit Monday.
The watchdog group's efforts are being redoubled by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, whose chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), issued a demand to the NARA on Aug. 17 that it must produce the records no later than Aug. 31.
Biden by any other name
Comer indicated in his Aug. 17 letter that the committee has confirmed "Robert L. Peters" to have been one of Biden's pseudonyms.
The New York Post noted in 2021 that Hunter Biden's laptop revealed the 80-year-old Democrat also corresponded under the aliases "Robin Ware" and "JRB Ware" on emails that mixed official and family business.
For instance, in 2016, John Flynn, then working in the Office of the Vice President, sent Joe Biden his daily schedule to the Robert Peters account, copying Hunter Biden as well.
In a June 2014 email to the Robin Ware email account, Hunter Biden lobbied his dad to consider a friend for a legal role in the Obama administration. "Dad" responded from the Ware account within an hour of receiving Hunter's message, reported the Post.
The Washington Examiner noted that John McGrail, a friend of Hunter Biden, happened to land a job as a deputy counsel in the vice president's office by the following month and soon received a promotion.
Biden appears to have also shared various family photos and other personal memories via the Ware account with Hunter Biden, including in a Nov. 24, 2012, letter in which the then-vice president addressed Hunter Biden as "My beautiful son," adding that he missed him.
Joe Biden reportedly further gave himself away as the man behind the Robin Ware account when he forwarded an email from then-Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken concerning Ukraine to Hunter Biden, his brother Beau, and the Delaware attorney general on March 26, 2012.
Beyond the three aliases at the heart of the NARA saga, the Post reported that messages contained on Hunter Biden's laptop appear to indicate Joe Biden also used the alias "Peter Henderson," a fictional Soviet spy in various Tom Clancy novels who infiltrated the U.S. government.
The account associated with this particular alias, "67stingray" — a reference to the president's 1967 Corvette Stingray that once shared a garage with classified documents — reportedly sent a message to Hunter Biden on Jan. 3, 2017, signed "Love Dad."
The admission
The SFL filed a FOIA request in October 2021 requesting "copies of all emails President Joe Biden preserved through the National Archives and Records Administration from his time as vice president for the following email addresses: robineware456@gmail.com, JRBWare@gmail.com and Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov."
The watchdog group indicated that it was told NARA was unable to make the emails public until Jan. 20, 2022, having not taken custody of Biden's vice presidential records until January 2017.
The SFL waited until June 9, 2022, before filing another FOIA request. This time, the group struck gold.
Stephannie Oriabure, director of the Archival Operations Division, responded later that month, noting that a search of the Biden vice presidential records turned up approximately 5,138 email messages, 25 electronic files, and 200 pages of "potentially responsive records."
Despite the admission that these records exist, the SFL claimed that the NARA has yet to produce any of the records, having been told in a June 16 email that the request has yet to be processed and is 29th in line to be dealt with.
Kimberly Hermann, general counsel for the SFL, said in a statement, "All too often, public officials abuse their power by using it for their 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."
Lawsuit and congressional countdown
The SFL filed a federal lawsuit against the NARA Monday, stressing that more than "14 months have elapsed since Defendant received SLF's FOIA request. Defendant has verified that approximately 5,138 responsive records exist, yet Defendant has failed to produce even a single document in response. ... Accordingly, SLF files this lawsuit to compel Defendant to comply with FOIA."
The suit alleges that the NARA has "failed to meet the statutory requirement to make the records promptly available" and is therefore in violation of FOIA.
Braden Boucek, SLF litigation director, stated, "Public transparency is the most vital check the citizens have for holding our political class accountable. After over a year of trying to work with NARA, its continued unreasonable delays have forced SLF to file this lawsuit."
Extra to the watchdog's legal action, the House Oversight Committee is leaning on the NARA to act.
Comer has stressed that the existence of emails penned by Biden under these aliases demonstrate that his 2019 claim that he erected "an absolute wall between the personal and private, and the government" was false.
"Evidence reveals that access was wide open for his family’s influence peddling," said Comer. "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."
In his letter to Archivist of the U.S. Colleen Shogan, Comer demanded "any document or communication in which a pseudonym for Vice President Joe Biden was included either as a sender, recipient, copied or was included in the contents of the document or communication, including but not limited to Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware," along with correspondences between or from Hunter Biden, Eric Schwerin, or Devon Archer.
Chairman Comer noted the urgency of the NARA's turnaround regarding the documents, intimating that the documents might shed some light on whether "foreign nationals have sought access and influence by engaging in lucrative business relationships with high-profile political figures’ immediate family members, including members of the Biden family."
The National Archives has until Thursday to comply with the congressional demand. Should the agency fail to do so, a federal court may yet force its hand in the SLF case.
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Trump legal team sues for NARA records to highlight alleged discrepancies in 'highly politicized' agency's treatment of the former president versus Biden, Obama
Former President Donald Trump is presently fighting legal battles on multiple fronts. While he prepares to mount defenses against what some have called a "patently political prosecution" in Manhattan and against accusations advanced by a Democrat prosecutor in Georgia, the legal team representing Trump in the classified documents saga is now going on offense.
Fox News Digital reported that the trio of attorneys representing Trump in the special counsel investigation into the presidential candidate's handling and retention of allegedly classified records are now forcing the National Archives and Records Administration to show its hand.
Attorneys James Trusty, Lindsey Halligan, and Evan Corcoran filed a Freedom of Information Act request Monday with the NARA.
They claim their FOIA suit will confirm their suspicions — and the suspicions of members of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability — that the National Archives is a "highly politicized" agency that criminalized a civil dispute over classified materials in an "unconstitutional and unprecedented weaponization of the Presidential Records Act."
Trusty told Fox News Digital that they have demanded "documents that will expose NARA's completely different treatment of President Trump from every other president."
TheBlaze previously reported on accusations that the NARA provided deferential treatment to President Joe Biden, who was found to be in possession of several troves of classified documents, which he may have improperly handled and retained.
Committee Chair Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote to acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall on Jan. 10 concerning "a political bias" at the NARA. Wall was reportedly one of the leading figures who triggered the FBI raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence over allegedly mishandled documents.
"For months, NARA failed to disclose to Committee Republicans or the American public that President Biden—after serving as Vice President—stored highly classified documents in a closet at his personal office," wrote Comer. "NARA learned about these documents days before the 2022 midterm elections and did not alert the public that President Biden was potentially violating the law."
"Meanwhile, NARA instigated a public and unprecedented FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago—former President Trump’s home—to retrieve presidential records. NARA’s inconsistent treatment of recovering classified records held by former President Trump and President Biden raises questions about political bias at the agency," Comer added.
Trusty said that he and the rest of Trump's legal team expect the FOIA suit to unearth evidence of "highly-politicized bureaucrats who worked in tandem with DOJ and politicians to criminalize a dispute that never has had criminal implications."
"We're confident that a substantive response to our demands from NARA will firmly establish a different and politicized treatment of President Trump," added Trusty.
In the event that the NARA complies with the FOIA suit, it will turn over records pertaining to its "dispute resolution process and communications about how the agency characterizes presidential records; its process for establishing secure locations for past presidents to maintain possession of those records; and other information."
The request, as written, "covers records located at any office within NARA, including its Office of General Counsel, each of its field and regional offices, the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, the George W. Bush Presidential Center, and the Obama Presidential Library."
Insights into the Clinton, Bush, and Obama presidential libraries and into how other presidents were treated by the NARA (e.g., whether the NARA has made criminal referrals with Biden or past presidents) may provide contrast for how Trump was in turn treated.
Extra to demanding communications between the NARA and the Biden administration — both about his storage of classified records at various insecure locations and his possible circumnavigation of the National Archives in other instances — Trump's legal team is "very interested in the arrangement where Obama's Foundation acknowledged possessing classified documents for years."
The Federalist reported that prior to the end of former President Barack Obama's tenure in office, he "rented a private facility in Hoffman Estates to serve as a storage place for his presidential papers, and by October of 2016, while he was still in office, shipments of artifacts from his presidency began arriving at the suburban Chicago storage facility."
The NARA later worked with Obama to ship his classified and unclassified documents to the Chicago area, where many remained well into 2018.
Trusty noted that the Trump legal team would "love to see the paper trail" relating to the $3.3 million that Obama Foundation Executive Director Robbie Cohen mentioned paying to the NARA "in eventual moving costs" for the Obama documents in a Sept. 21, 2018, letter.
The lawsuit also covers "any and all documents" related to the "dispute-resolution process that NARA uses, or has used, to resolve disagreements with any of the Past Presidents and their Administrations, concerning the classification of records as Presidential records, personal records, agency records or otherwise."
In addition to providing a look behind the scenes at the NARA and at its approach to Trump, the former president's attorneys indicated they mean to expose that "the underpinnings" of the DOJ's investigation into Trump's handling of classified records are "rotten."
Trump's legal team gave the NARA 10 days to turn over the documents, noting, "Expedited treatment is justified because President Trump has a reasonable expectation of an imminent loss of a substantial due process right."
This lawsuit comes just days after a federal judge ordered Trump attorney Evan Corcoran to testify in the classified documents investigation, reported CNN.
A Trump spokesman said of the DOJ's targeting of Corcoran: "Whenever prosecutors target the attorneys, that’s usually a good indication their underlying case is very weak. If they had a real case, they wouldn’t need to play corrupt games with the Constitution. Every American has the right to consult with counsel and have candid discussions – this promotes adherence to the law."
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'You lied to us under oath': Hawley corners Biden nominee with her own words that contradict her testimony
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) confronted President Joe Biden's nominee to lead the National Archives and Records Administration on Tuesday in a tense exchange that included accusations of perjury.
While testifying before Congress last year, Dr. Colleen Shogan told the Senate that she would not turn over her Twitter posts — which had been public prior to her nomination — because they were only about "mystery novels, events about the White House Historical Association, Pittsburgh sports teams, travels, and my dog," thus denying charges of partisanship.
At a Senate Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday, Hawley reminded Shogan of those comments, which were made under oath, and that she was, at the moment, also under oath. Shogan then reaffirmed the truth of that statement.
What followed was Hawley confronting Shogan about partisan Twitter posts that were not about any of the topics she claimed they were about.
In February 2022, Shogan bemoaned the dropping of mask requirements for children. In May 2022, Shogan endorsed banning assault weapons. In January 2021, she criticized Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). In December 2020, Shogan criticized then-President Donald Trump. In December 2021, Shogan said religious flags on the lawn of the Library of Congress needed to be removed, unaware that they were legally permitted to be there.
But Shogan refused to answer. Instead, after each instance of being confronted with her own words, Shogan told Hawley, "My social media is in my personal capacity."
Eventually, Hawley gave up.
"I have to say, I have been here for four years in the Senate," he finally said. "I have never seen a witness stonewall like this before. Never. And I've seen a lot.
"This is extraordinary," the exasperated senator added. "I mean, this is unbelievable, and you want to be the archivist of the United States. You lied to us under oath. You lied to us in your [Questions for the Record]. You just lied to me a second ago under oath. And now you're sitting here stonewalling, not answering questions about public posts that you've made."
‘You Are Lying Under Oath': Senator Hawley Slams Archivist Nominee www.youtube.com
Before concluding his questions, Hawley asked one more time whether she would turn over her social media posts. But she declined to do that.
"Mr. Chairman, I have to tell you, this is the most extraordinary thing I have seen in my brief time in the Senate," Hawley responded.
"I have never seen a witness blatantly lie under oath like Dr. Shogan has just done to this committee, stonewalled this committee, and just repeatedly refused to answer my questions about her own posts that are in public," he continued.
"For these reasons, I will oppose your nomination and I strongly, strongly urge this committee to take action on this and force this witness to own up to the fact that she is misleading us right now before our eyes," Hawley concluded.
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