While serving as Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden used a pseudonym to discuss a future White House hire with his son, Hunter, emails have revealed.
According to 2014 emails from Hunter’s laptop, then-Vice President Biden discussed official White House business with his son and apparently tried to hide the fact.
On June 23, 2014, Hunter emailed “Robin Ware” from his company email at Rosemont Seneca Partners.
According to the email conversation, Hunter Biden appeared to have a say in the White House’s taxpayer-funded hiring practices.
“Before you fill position pls talk to me—– J. McGrail very much wants to serve as detail fr treasury,” Hunter wrote.
A response just minutes later from the email account robinware456@gmail.com reads: “Re Johnny call me right away Dad.”
According to House Republicans investigating the family’s influence-peddling, “Robin Ware” is one of several pseudonyms Biden used during his vice presidency to discuss government matters with his son.
John McGrail was serving as senior counsel at the U.S. Treasury at the time of the emails.
According to his LinkedIn profile, McGrail joined the White House as Biden’s deputy counsel two months later.
Today, McGrail is back at Treasury as a counselor to the undersecretary for domestic finance.
The revelations in the email come after the news broke this week that the Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) had sued the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), demanding all Biden vice presidential records and communications related to three email accounts: robinware456@gmail.com, JRBWare@gmail.com and Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov.
The SLF said it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in June 2022 for the records but has not seen a single document.
NARA appeared to confirm the existence of more than 5,000 potentially responsive documents to the foundation’s FOIA request in a June 2022 email that was revealed as part of the lawsuit.
“We have performed a search of our collection for Vice Presidential records related to your request and have identified approximately 5,138 email messages, 25 electronic files, and 200 pages of potentially responsive records that must be processed in order to respond to your request,” reads the email on June 24, 2022.
“Please keep in mind that these totals are an estimate and that all material processed may not be applicable to your specific topic,” it continued.
“The staff of the Archival Operations Division is currently processing and reviewing FOIA requests that precede your request.
“To treat everyone equitably, we have placed your request in our Complex queue by the date it was received in our office.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer also sent a letter to NARA this month to request unredacted email communications between Biden and his son related to Ukraine, Burisma, and all documents related to the pseudonyms.
“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.
“We already have evidence of then-Vice President Biden speaking, dining, and having coffee with his son’s foreign business associates,” he said.
“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.”
