Comer demands records of Biden using pseudonym while VP

WASHINGTON — House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer asked the National Archives Wednesday to hand over any unredacted records in which President Biden used a pseudonym during his vice presidency — as Republicans move closer to launching an impeachment inquiry into his role in son Hunter’s foreign business dealings.

Emails previously released by the Archives and retrieved from Hunter’s abandoned laptop reveal that Joe Biden used the email address “[email protected]” while Barack Obama’s second-in-command and that his aide John Flynn cc’d Hunter on 10 emails containing the elder Biden’s daily schedule between May 18 and June 15, 2016.

Comer’s request covers records using Biden’s other known pseudonyms — “Robin Ware” and “JRB Ware” — and makes pointed requests for certain documents, such as drafts of Biden’s December 2015 speech to Ukraine’s parliament.

“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 (R-Ky.) 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,” Comer went on.

“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.“

The House Oversight Committee request primarily is focused on Hunter’s $1 million per year position on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which hired the then-second son in early 2014 as his dad assumed control of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.

But the broad request for records involving the president’s pseudonyms could turn up a variety of content, including about other Biden family ventures in countries such as China.

In a letter to Archivist Colleen Shogan, Comer requested “[a]ny 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.”

Comer also seeks “[a]ny document or communication in which Hunter Biden, Eric Schwerin, or Devon Archer was included either as a sender, recipient, copied, or was included in the contents of the document or communication” and “[a]ll drafts from November 1, 2015, to December 9, 2015, of then-Vice President Biden’s speech delivered to the Ukrainian Rada on December 9, 2015.”

Comer specifically asked for “unrestricted special access under the PRA to Case Number 2023- 0022-F, entitled ‘Email Messages To and/or From Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden related to Burisma and Ukraine,’” which contains some of the daily schedule emails, with redactions.

Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky allegedly told an FBI informant in 2016 that he was “coerced” into paying $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for the vice president’s help in ousting Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma.

Zlochevsky allegedly told the informant he kept two audio recordings of Joe Biden and 15 of Hunter Biden in addition to financial records.

The White House has denied that Joe Biden ever accepted bribes, with the president calling the allegation “malarkey” in June and asking, “Where’s the money?”

Archer, a former close Biden family associate, told the Oversight Committee in a July 31 interview that Hunter stepped away from a Dubai dinner in December 2015 to call his father and was joined by Zlochevsky and Burisma board adviser Vadym Pozharskyi, with whom Joe Biden had also met during a dinner at Washington’s Café Milano that April.