President Joe Biden may have used multiple aliases during his time as vice president, and one of his pseudonyms may have ended up in at least one 2016 case involving his son Hunter Biden, and then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter (pdf) to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on Thursday, requesting fully unredacted copies of all communications involving then-Vice President Biden and his son that referenced Ukraine or Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company his son worked with. Mr. Comer specifically alleged at least one of these communications was sent to “Robert L. Peters,” a name Mr. Comer alleges was an alias the elder Biden used.
As part of a response Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (case number: 2023-0022-F), NARA previously identified at least four emails between the Joe Biden and his son, which related to Ukraine or Burisma. NARA granted full access to one email and partial access to a second, but restricted access to the remaining records it identified in its FOIA response.
One such record contained in the partial FOIA response described a May 27, 2016, email from a vice presidential aide to Vice President Biden “with Hunter Biden as a carbon copied recipient.” According to Mr. Comer, the email identified in the FOIA response was sent to “Robert L. Peters.”
“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,” Mr. Comer said in his letter to NARA. “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.”
Mr. Comer requested full unredacted access to all four communications that NARA identified in response to FOIA case number 2023-0022-F. The Republican investigator also requested copies of any document or communication in which Vice President Biden was included either as a sender, recipient, copied party, or otherwise referenced under a pseudonym “including but not limited to Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware.”
Mr. Comer also requested all records in which Hunter Biden, his former business partner Devon Archer, and Eric Schwerin where included as a sender, recipient, copied part or otherwise referenced.
The Republican investigator additionally sought all drafts created between Nov. 1, 2015, and Dec. 9, 2015, of a speech Vice President Biden delivered to the Ukrainian Rada on Dec. 9, 2015. The Ukrainian Rada is Ukraine’s unicameral parliament.
President Has Denied Involvement In Son’s Business Dealings
Mr. Comer’s records request comes in the weeks after Mr. Archer testified before members of Congress that Hunter Biden had his father on speaker-phone during several business meetings and that the elder Biden attended at least two in-person dinners with his son and their business partners, and that Burisma officials were involved in at least some of these interactions.
In his testimony (pdf), Mr. Archer said, “The value that Hunter Biden brought to it was having—the theoretical was corporate governance, but obviously, given the brand, that was a large part of the value.” He further testified that the “brand” he was describing was the Biden family name and that of the U.S. vice president specifically. He also said the “brand” had value for Burisma “because people would be intimidated to mess with them.”
In 2019, while on the campaign trail, the elder Biden proclaimed, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” an assertion Republicans have repeatedly called into question. Republicans have gone so far as to allege that Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family saw business success by selling access to his father.
Following Mr. Archer’s testimony earlier this month, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) asserted that all interactions between Joe Biden and his son’s business partners were of a casual nature and never directly involved their business dealings.
Mr. Goldman also claimed Mr. Archer testified to the effect that he did not believe Hunter Biden actually sold access to his father, only the “illusion of access.” The official transcript of Mr. Archer’s testimony showed it was actually Mr. Goldman who raised the “illusion of access” characterization and that Mr. Archer didn’t fully agree with that assessment, saying it was “almost fair” but that there “are touch points and contact points that I can’t deny that happened.”
While it’s not entirely clear what was said in the May 27, 2016, email to Vice President Biden, the fact that his son was copied in on the communication could indicate he had some awareness of his father’s interactions with Ukrainian officials around the time he was working for Burisma. Mr. Archer testified that he believed Burisma officials wanted Hunter Biden to help them ward off investigative pressure from the Ukrainian government.
NTD News reached out to the White House for comment following Mr. Comer’s records request. The White House did not respond by the time this article was published.