Washington DC [US], August 18 : US House Republicans are seeking records revealing Joe Biden's use of “pseudonyms” to discuss his activities related to Ukraine with his son Hunter during his tenure as vice president, The Hill reported on Thursday.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) on Thursday requested that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to provide unredacted documents and communications from President Biden’s tenure as vice president as part of the panel’s probe into the president’s son Hunter Biden.
Comer is also asking for documents and communications in which Biden used a “pseudonym”; that included Hunter Biden or his business partners Eric Schwerin and Devon Archer; and all drafts of the speech that Biden delivered to the Ukrainian legislature in December 2015.
Specifically, Comer is requesting that the National Archives provide the committee special “unredacted access” to a tranche of emails from Biden’s vice presidential records, which includes messages related to Ukraine and the Ukrainian gas company Burisma sent or received by President Biden or Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden sat on the board of Burisma at the time. Redacted copies of those emails were previously released publicly under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), according to The Hill.
Comer and the committee have released a series of transcripts and memos seeking to link Hunter Biden’s activities back to his father, over the past few weeks. Democrats have dismissed the allegations.
“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 said in a statement alongside the request to the National Archives.
“We already have evidence of then-Vice President Biden speaking, dining, and having coffee with his son’s foreign business associates. 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,” The Hill quoted the statement.
The White House has previously said that the president was never in business with his son.
Earlier this month, Devon Archer, who sat on the board of Burisma with Hunter Biden, testified to the Oversight Committee that the president was never involved in their business decisions, and that he had no evidence or knowledge that the U.S. took any action to benefit Burisma or Hunter Biden, as per The Hill.
Archer, on the other hand, has said that Hunter Biden portrayed the “illusion” of access to his father when he was vice president but did not have real influence.
Republicans, meanwhile, have pointed to Archer’s testimony that Hunter Biden put his father on speakerphone multiple times while with foreign business associates to allege the president wasn’t being truthful when he said in 2019 he hadn’t discussed business with his son, The Hill reported.
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