The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has located 82,000 pages of emails sent or received by President Joe Biden under three separate pseudonym accounts, significantly more than the number that embroiled former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in scandal.
NARA’s findings were made public through an Oct. 30 legal filing following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought against the agency by the Southeastern Legal Foundation.
The foundation filed the legal challenge after it was discovered last year that Biden used at least three shadow email addresses ([email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]) while serving as U.S. Vice President.
Under federal records law, Biden was obligated to preserve all emails regarding his government work. That NARA has so many records suggests that Biden turned over a considerable number of the emails.
“NARA has completed a search for potentially responsive documents and is currently processing those documents for the purpose of producing non-exempt portions of any responsive records on a monthly rolling basis,” the court document states. “Given the scope of Plaintiff’s FOIA request, which seeks copies of all emails in three separate accounts over an eight-year period, the volume of potentially responsive records is necessarily large.”
The filing added, “NARA has identified approximately 82,000 pages of potentially responsive documents, and it is currently processing those documents and preparing any nonexempt responsive documents for production on a rolling basis.”
A State Department Inspector General report in 2016 found that Clinton produced approximately 55,000 pages with roughly 30,000 emails relating to official business. The emails were stored on Clinton’s private server, which the FBI assessed was “reasonably likely” to have been accessed by enemies of the United States.
Biden’s use of “burner” email accounts received renewed scrutiny in August when the House Oversight Committee ordered NARA to turn over all unredacted documents and communications in which Biden used a pseudonym. A growing number of Republicans suspect Biden may have used fake accounts to skirt or obfuscate records retention laws, providing cover for illicit activities now under investigation by congress.
“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,” Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer said to NARA in a letter.
“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,” Comer added. “The National Archives must provide these unredacted records to further our investigation into the Biden family’s corruption.”
Southern Legal Foundation has asked U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin to order a joint state report to be submitted by Dec. 8, as well as for proposals for next steps in the case.
