Did Joe Biden use aliases when emailing?: The House Oversight Committee this week is asking for emails President Biden supposedly sent while using aliases, such as “Robert Peters.”
What Did Joe Biden Do?
The House Oversight Committee this week asked for records from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), including those in which the president used a “pseudonym.”
According to a letter to NARA from Rep. James Comer (R-KY), to NARA, the committee is seeking “all unredacted documents and communications in which then-Vice President Joe Biden used a pseudonym; Hunter Biden, Eric Schwerin, or Devon Archer is copied; and all drafts of then-Vice President Biden’s speech delivered to the Ukrainian Rada in December 2015.”
The letter from Comer alleges that Biden used a series of aliases in emails while he was vice president, including “Robert Peters,” “Robin Ware,” and “JRB Ware.”
Were those people really Biden? Comer’s letter says “Peters” is “a pseudonym the Committee has identified as then Vice-President Biden,” although the letter is not clear on how solid that assertion is.
Why would the then-vice president use a pseudonym, if “Robert Peters” is in fact, Biden? The committee statement suggests that it was in order to avoid FOIA requests, while it’s also possible that a top elected official would want to avoid using a publicly available email address, for reasons other than corruption or criminality.
“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. We already have evidence of then-Vice President Biden speaking, dining, and having coffee with his son’s foreign business associates,” Comer says in the letter.
“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.”
But once again, the Oversight Committee, despite nearly eight months of over-promising, has yet to establish either that Biden received any money from any of his son’s business deals, or that he did anything in office to benefit his son’s business partners. Unless and until they can establish either of those things, there will likely be no smoking gun that can bring the president down. However, the House may move forward with an impeachment inquiry regardless.
The Washington Post’s fact checker Glenn Kessler, this week, looked at the House Republicans’ tendency to overhype their findings.
“The memos are written in a partisan manner — ignoring or playing down contrary information — but an interesting pattern has emerged. The memos themselves have careful language that is often hedged,” Kessler wrote. “Then Comer and other GOP lawmakers, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), go on Twitter or speak to conservative media using hyperbolic language that goes well beyond what the memos say. Over time, the reporting on the memos in conservative media becomes untethered from the documentation in the reports.”
For instance, Biden family members did not receive $20 million by any accurate count, nor is Hunter Biden accused of using “shell companies “
“Hunter Biden’s decision to pursue business deals that at the time overlapped with his father’s policy brief as vice president was ill-advised and has caused political headaches for his father. Republicans are pursuing the case with vigor, but Comer undercuts the findings of his investigation by hyping what has been found,” Kessler writes. “Comer would have more credibility if he stuck to documented facts — such as saying precisely that Hunter Biden received $7 million from foreign sources.”
In the meantime, the White House will likely be asked whether those pseudonyms were really used by Biden, and why.
Meanwhile, there was a development Thursday in the case involving Hunter Biden. Per CNN, a federal judge has dismissed the earlier misdemeanor tax charges against the president’s son, both of which were part of the plea bargain the government reached with Hunter Biden that fell apart earlier this month. That dismissal, per CNN, may pave the way for additional charges to be brought, possibly in California or Washington, now that David Weiss has been named a special counsel.
Author Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Stephen has authored thousands of articles over the years that focus on politics, technology, and the economy for over a decade. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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