It wasn’t long ago that Republican lawmakers revealed President Joe Biden had used several pseudonyms to conceal his identity in emails when he was vice president. The massive scale of this deception has only just been made public, though. The National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) has admitted that it possesses possibly as many as 5,400 emails and other documents on which Biden used one of three fictitious names. NARA was central to the investigation of former President Donald Trump for supposedly mishandling classified documents, but, for as long as it could, the agency declined to acknowledge the existence of Biden’s fake-name emails.
The Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) first filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the emails in 2021, but NARA did not produce them. In 2022, the legal group followed up with a second FOIA request and finally filed a lawsuit. Only then did NARA come clean about Biden’s alter egos. However, the emails have yet to be handed over or made public.
Joe Biden’s Many Pseudonyms
Joe Biden is not the only government official to have used a pseudonym in written communications, but the number of times he did so and the use of three different names — JRB Ware, Robert L. Peters, and Robin Ware – suggest he went to great lengths to avoid being associated with certain people or events. Also, the then-vice president is known to have used one of these phony names in emails on which his son, Hunter, was copied.
Recent media reports suggest that Hunter Biden and his close friend and business partner Devon Archer enjoyed cozy relationships with some senior Obama administration officials.
Joe Biden (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
A picture is emerging of some very active influence-peddling involving Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Archer, and several Obama appointees. It appears the senior Biden was concealing his involvement in these activities. Perhaps it is also time for someone to start asking how much Barack Obama knew about Hunter’s shady agreements and financial dealings.
“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,” SLF’s general counsel Kimberly Hermann said in a statement. “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.”
NARA’s reluctance to cooperate – especially after it was so quick to release information about the Trump document affair – does not reflect well on its supposed professionalism or impartiality. Neither is it a good look for Joe Biden himself, who is sinking deeper into the Biden family bribery and pay-to-play morass. It seems unlikely that NARA will be able to keep the emails, electronic records, and other documents on which Biden sought to conceal his identity under wraps for much longer. They are now destined to become part of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the Biden family financial scandal.
