Joe Biden ‘used pseudonyms while vice-President when discussing Ukraine with son Hunter’: GOP

A Republican controlled committee asks the US Archive for emails Joe Biden may have sent or received from three pseudonyms, including Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware.

Joe Biden allegedly used pseudonyms as vice-president. Picture: Getty Images

Republicans have alleged President Joe Biden used pseudonyms in private emails with his son and business associates to conceal potentially corrupt activity while he was vice-president from 2013 to 2017.

The House of Representatives Oversight Committee asked the top US archivist to provide any emails that included the names Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware, along with any emails among Biden family members “related to Burisma and Ukraine”, a reference to the energy company whose board Hunter Biden joined in 2014.

“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,” Committee chairman James Comer said in a statement on Thursday (Friday AEST).

Joe Biden, with son Hunter Biden, arrives at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, New York. Picture: AFP.

The letter to Colleen Shogan, the Archivist of the United States, singled out an already published but partly redacted email related to a May, 2016 phone call between Mr Biden and the then president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko.

“It is concerning to the Committee, however, that this document was sent to “Robert L. Peters” — a pseudonym the Committee has identified as then vice-President Biden,” the letter read, in an apparent confirmation of reporting by Miranda Devine in 2021 based on the now publicly available contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The Peters email address appeared 27 times on the laptop according to Marco Polo, a non-profit research organisation dedicated to exposing corruption.

“Additionally, the Committee questions why the then-vice-president’s son, Hunter Biden — and only Hunter Biden — was copied on this email to then-vice-president Biden”.

The request was the latest instalment of the Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Biden family’s financial affairs amid allegations Mr Biden as vice president improperly used his office to benefit his family via his son Hunter’s various business dealings with foreign companies.

The powerful House Committee, which Republicans took control of following November’s midterm congressional elections, had earlier uncovered bank records that showed the Biden family received over US$20 million in payments via shell companies from foreigners while Mr Biden was vice-president.

The White House has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, although it recently changed its response to questions about allegations, stating the president “was never in business with his son” from an earlier form of words that suggested the president “had never spoken to his son” about his business dealings.

House Oversight and Accountability Committee chairman James Comer walks to reporters after attending an FBI briefing. Picture: Getty Images

The Committee’s letter also asked for all drafts of then-vice-president Biden’s speech delivered to the Ukrainian Rada in December 2015”.

Mr Biden as vice-president had significant influence over the Ukrainian government, bragging after he left office that he was responsible for removing the nation’s top prosecutor Viktor Shokin in early 2016.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion [dollars].’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Mr Biden said, referring to prospective US aid to Kyiv, at a Council of Foreign Relations public event in 2018.

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last month floated the possibility of a congressional ‘impeachment inquiry’ into Joe Biden, based on various strands of evidence including from the FBI, IRS whistleblowers, and congressional testimony from Devon Archer, that suggested the Biden family might have acted corruptly.

In September 2020 the Senate Committee on Homeland Security published an 87-page document “Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on US Government Policy and Related Concerns”, reflecting long standing concerns about Mr Biden’s son’s role in Ukraine, and its potential to compromise US foreign policy.

“The presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all US officials pushing an anti corruption agenda in Ukraine,” former Obama administration official George Kent wrote in September 2016, according to the report.