House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) demanded Thursday that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) hand over all documents and communications in which then-Vice President Joe Biden used pseudonyms such as “Robert Peters,” “Robin Ware,” and “JRB Ware.”
Comer listed the pseudonyms in a letter to NARA in which he demanded access to then-Vice President Joe Biden’s documents and communications regarding official duties that overlapped with his son’s activities in Ukraine.
One email, which Comer says the committee has already seen, includes an attachment with the vice president’s schedule, indicating that he had spoken by phone to then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The email was sent to a “Robert L. Peters” and cc’ed to the vice president’s son, Hunter Biden.
Joe Biden was the designated foreign policy point person to Ukraine during the Obama administration. The House Oversight Committee argues that Joe Biden threatened to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine in 2015 until the president of Ukraine fired prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who had jurisdiction for an investigation into the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
Burisma paid Hunter Biden $83,000 a month for a board position to obtain the Biden “brand,” as Biden business associate Devon Archer described the arrangement.
Years later, in 2018, Joe Biden bragged about the firing of Shokin, which he pushed for during an official visit to Ukraine in 2015.
“I said, ‘I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars.’ I said, ‘you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours,’” Biden told the audience. “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”
On Tuesday, Comer issued a request to NARA for all unredacted materials in which then-Vice President Joe Biden used a pseudonym related to his relationship with Ukraine. Comer explained he specifically seeks an email titled, “Email Messages To and/or From Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden related to Burisma and Ukraine.” Comer said the email, attached with a document, was sent to “Robert L. Peters”— a pseudonym for Joe Biden:
The Committee seeks 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 has been published on NARA’s website. These records have been redacted for public release pursuant to the PRA and FOIA. For example, an email bearing the subject “Friday Schedule Card,” is withheld in part under a “P6” and “b(6)” restrictions, denoting personal information regarding the subject under the PRA and FOIA respectively.
Attached to this email, and made available on the NARA website, is a document that indicates at 9:00 a.m. on May 27, 2016, Vice President Biden took a call with the president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko. 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. 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.
“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 wrote in a statement. “The National Archives must provide these unredacted records to further our investigation into the Biden family’s corruption.”
“We already have evidence of then-Vice President Biden speaking, dining, and having coffee with his son’s foreign business associates,” he continued. “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.”
Comer gave NARA until August 31, 2023, to respond with the material.