President Joe Biden may have sent or received about 82,000 pages of emails through pseudonymous email accounts, according to a filing by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
The court filing was made as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a conservative nonprofit organization, against NARA.
Biden's use of email accounts under pseudonyms during his time as vice president became the focus of renewed attention in August. Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability are seeking unredacted emails from that time that relate to Ukraine and natural gas company Burisma.
Newsweek has reached out to the White House via email for comment, but here is what we know so far.
The Pseudonyms
The Southeastern Legal Foundation is seeking all of the emails from Biden's time as vice president from the addresses robinware456@gmail.com, JRBWare@gmail.com and Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov.
Biden was vice president from 2009 to 2017 and the Southeastern Legal Foundation is seeking copies of all the emails from those accounts from that period.
In August, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer sent a letter to NARA seeking "all unredacted documents and communications in which then-Vice President Joe Biden used a pseudonym."
The pseudonyms listed in Comer's letter were "Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware."
Those names were used by Biden as pseudonyms for private email addresses during his time as vice president, according to a report from The New York Post in July 2021.
Newsweek attempted to reach out to the email address cited in that 2021 report—Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov—in August, but received a bounce back.
That request came as part of House Republicans' investigation into the president and the business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden. The White House has repeatedly denied that Biden had any involvement in Hunter Biden's business affairs.
Comer said in his letter that the Oversight Committee wants to see: "Email Messages To and/or From Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden related to Burisma and Ukraine"
Ian Sams, White House spokesman for oversight and investigations, addressed the use of pseudonyms on X, formerly Twitter.
"Just when you think @HouseGOP shenanigans can't get dumber they start fussing about email 'pseudonyms,;" Sams wrote.
"Newsflash: government leaders for decades have used aliases to avoid spam & hacking Did they think he was just joe dot biden @? LOL Wonder what some Congressmen's emails are!" he added.
82,000 Pages
In the court filing on Monday, counsel for NARA and the Southeastern Legal Foundation provided a joint preliminary report and plan for discovery in the lawsuit. That filing was made in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
The report said that NARA had identified about 82,000 pages that are "potentially responsive" to the FOIA lawsuit.
"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 filing said.
"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 says.
It also notes that: "Plaintiff intends to propose, and the parties will discuss, options to narrow the FOIA request in efforts to resolve this matter more expeditiously."
NARA and the Southeastern Legal Foundation are in negotiations, according to the court filing, and they asked the court to set a December 8 deadline for them to submit a joint status report.
Update 10/31/23 08.37a.m. E.T.: This article was updated to include comments from White House spokesman Ian Sams.
Uncommon Knowledge
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About the writer
Darragh Roche is a U.S. News Reporter based in Limerick, Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. politics. He has ... Read more
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