Southeastern Legal Foundation filed a federal lawsuit against the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) seeking all emails from when then-Vice President Joe Biden used three personal pseudonym email accounts to forward government information and discuss government business with his son, Hunter Biden, and others. NARA and other sources have confirmed that Biden used the alias names Robin Ware, Robert L. Peters, and JRB Ware.
SLF requested these now highly sought after emails from NARA on June 9, 2022, through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Unfortunately, after identifying nearly 5,400 potentially responsive records, NARA has dragged its feet and still has not produced a single email. SLF now turns to the court, asking it to order NARA to produce Biden’s emails.
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President Biden’s use of pseudonym email accounts was brought to light in July 2021 by John Solomon, the New York Post, and a letter from Senators Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley. Just a few months later, SLF first asked NARA to release the emails. NARA responded that because it did not take custody of then-vice president Biden’s records until January 20, 2017, the emails could not be made public until January 20, 2022.
In 2022, following the statutory waiting period, SLF filed a second FOIA request, once again asked NARA to produce all emails in its possession “to” or “from” Biden’s pseudonym email addresses: robinware45@gmail.com, JRBware@gmail.com, and Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov.
NARA quickly informed SLF that it had identified approximately 5,138 email messages, 25 electronic files, and 200 pages of potentially responsive records. To date, despite SLF’s numerous attempts to follow-up with the agency, NARA has failed to produce a single one of these emails.
The emails that SLF has been trying to expose for nearly two years are now at the center of a congressional investigation into the Bidens’ foreign business dealings. In an attempt to get the very same records, in August 2023, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer demanded NARA turn over unredacted copies of these emails, among others.
For years, SLF has been exposing the direct and documented relationship between Hunter Biden’s companies and the State Department. The impact of exposing this relationship was made clear in the 2020 when the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Senate Committee on Finance expressly credited SLF’s FOIA lawsuit brought on behalf of award-winning investigative reporter John Solomon as bringing “fresh public attention and scrutiny to potential conflicts of interest with respect to Ukraine policy in the Obama administration.” The report went on to highlight numerous records obtained by SLF and Solomon through litigation.