Glenn Reynolds takes up the news of Joe Biden’s alias Robert L. Peters email account in the New York Post column “Joe Biden’s email aliases reveal truth behind aw-shucks facade.” Glenn hypothesizes that the alias email account may reveal Biden to be a shrewd crook and his senility to be an act.
Glenn asks whether Biden is putting us on with his public displays of oblivion. I can’t tell if Glenn himself is putting on an act in this column, but it does not take relevant facts into account. If I have missed Glenn’s joke, please forgive me. For readers who may not have been following the story with the attention of an obsessive, I want to supplement Glenn’s column with additional facts that belie Glenn’s hypothesis, complicate the story, and bring it up to date.
• Glenn asks if Biden’s senility is an act in light of the news that Biden “had at least one pseudonymous email account that he used so he could secretly collude with his son (and alleged bagman) Hunter.”
• We know that Biden had three alias email accounts: Robert L. Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware. We have known this since July 2021 when Miranda Devine reported it — where else? — in the New York Post, based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
• Devine’s July 2021 column is now prefaced with this editor’s note: “House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer asked the National Archives on Aug. 16, 2023, to turn over unredacted records in which President Biden used a pseudonym during his vice presidency — as Republicans move closer to launching an impeachment inquiry into his role in son Hunter’s foreign business dealings. This column on Biden’s use of private email addresses was originally published in July 2021.”
• Biden’s alias Robert L. Peters and other pseudonymous email accounts date from the period 2012-2016, when Biden was vice president. They are not a recent invention.
• During the 2012-2016 period our estimate of Biden was that he was stupid in the familiar manner, not that he was senile. The evidence of Biden’s age-related mental decline stems from the years since then and continues to accumulate.
• Josh Christenson reports on Biden’s use of the alias email addresses in the same edition of the Post that carries Glenn’s column today. Christenson’s story is “Joe Biden used email pseudonyms while VP to loop in Hunter on Ukraine, government business.” Christenson’s story opens: “President Biden used at least three pseudonyms during his vice presidency to send messages to his son Hunter concerning both family and official government business — including meetings with Ukrainian leaders, emails found on the first son’s abandoned laptop show.”
• Glenn posits: “The only reason to run such an [alias email] account is to make sure that the emails don’t get archived in official systems and aren’t available under the Freedom of Information Act, and to keep the communications out of the reach of critics, and possibly law enforcement.”
• However, Comer has now asked the National Archives to turn over unredacted records where Biden relied on the aliases when communicating with Hunter and his business partners Eric Schwerin and Devon Archer.
• In his letter to the archivist this week Comer writes:
The Committee seeks unrestricted special access under the PRA to Case Number 2023-0022-F, entitled “Email Messages To and/or From Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden related to Burisma and Ukraine,” which has been published on NARA’s website. These records have been redacted for public release pursuant to the PRA and FOIA. For example, an email bearing the subject “Friday Schedule Card,” is withheld in part under a “P6” and “b(6)” restrictions, denoting personal information regarding the subject under the PRA and FOIA respectively. Attached to this email, and made available on the NARA website, is a document that indicates on 9:00 a.m. on May 27, 2016, Vice President Biden took a call with the 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. 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.
It appears that at least some of the relevant alias emails have in fact been archived. That is the premise of Comer’s current request to the archives.
• Comer has posted a copy of his letter to the archivist online here.
• Glenn to the contrary notwithstanding, I think it far more likely that Biden was stupid then and is stupid now rather than that is senility is an act. However, his native stupidity is now aggravated by his obvious senility.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.