Comer Requests National Archives Records Tying Then-VP Biden to Hunter’s Ukrainian Business Dealings

House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer sent a letter to the National Archives and Records Administration on Thursday requesting documents related to any official duties Joe Biden undertook while vice president that overlapped with Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine.

Comer writes in the letter to NARA archivist Colleen Shogan, obtained by National Review, that the agency’s vice-presidential records collection contains information relevant to the committee’s work in investigating President Biden’s meetings and communications with certain family members and their business associates during his tenure as vice president.

Many of the records have been heavily redacted and Comer argues that is it “essential” for the committee to review the documents in their original format.

Among the documents of interest is a file entitled, “Email Messages To and/or From Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden related to Burisma and Ukraine.” The file exists on NARA’s website in a heavily redacted state.

The committee is seeking more information about an email with the subject line “Friday Schedule Card.” A document that is attached to that email indicates then-Vice President Biden had a call with then-Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

Comer writes that the committee is concerned because the document was sent to “Robert L. Peters,” an apparent pseudonym used by then-Vice President Biden. Hunter Biden was the only person copied on the email to the then-vice president. 

Comer specifically requests all unredacted documents and communications “in which then-Vice President Joe Biden used a pseudonym; Hunter Biden, Eric Schwerin, or Devon Archer is copied; and all drafts of then-Vice President Biden’s speech delivered to the Ukrainian Rada in December 2015.”

The committee asks that NARA provide the requested documents no later than August 31.

“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 to National Review. “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,” he concludes.

The committee recently released bank records that revealed Biden family and its business associates received millions of dollars from oligarchs in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine while Joe Biden was vice president.

The committee says it has identified more than $20 million in payments from foreign sources to the Biden family and their business associates. Those foreign sources include not only the three aforementioned countries, but also China and Romania as well.

Hunter Biden’s former business associate Devon Archer previously testified that then-Vice President Biden joined roughly 20 phone calls on speakerphone with Hunter Biden’s foreign business associates and attended dinners with foreign oligarchs who paid large sums of money to Hunter Biden.

The foreign funds were sent to accounts tied to Devon Archer that used the Rosemont Seneca name and were then doled out in incremental payments to Hunter Biden, the records show, in what the committee suggests was an attempt to hide the source and size of the payments.

Then-Vice President Joe Biden attended dinners with Hunter Biden; Archer; Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina; Burisma executives; and Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakhstani oligarch, in the spring of 2014 and 2015 at Cafe Milano.

Also in spring 2014, Archer and Biden joined the Burisma board of directors at a salary of $1 million per year each. President Biden visited Ukraine soon after Archer and the younger Biden received their first payments — payments that were sent to Rosemont Seneca Bohai and later sent in incremental amounts to Hunter Biden’s different bank accounts.  

The committee confirmed IRS whistleblower testimony that Archer and Hunter Biden received $6.5 million in funds from Burisma, which is owned by Mykola Zlochevsky, a Ukrainian oligarch who bribed officials $6 million over the investigation into the natural gas company.

Archer told the committee earlier this month that Hunter Biden’s value on Burisma’s board was “the brand.” Archer said then-vice president Biden was “the brand.”

“Burisma would have gone out of business if ‘the brand’ had not been attached to it,” Archer said, according to the committee.