US National Archives is going to release series of secret files centering White House email about Ukrainian company Burisma, which had paid Joe Biden’s scandalous son Hunter Biden millions of dollars. The emails are from 2014, when President Joe Biden served as vice president under former President Barack Obama. According to media reports, the White House now has 60 days to decide whether to stop the release of the emails by invoking executive privilege.
Mark Zaid, a national-security lawyer who has represented many federal whistleblowers, said the case for executive privilege was weak on legal grounds for those documents that are already in third-party hands, and invocation for any document carried political risks as well. “Any selective invocation of privilege”, he said “would no doubt only serve to highlight the sensitivities”.
Media reports further said, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is quietly preparing to release hundreds of pages of internal Obama White House records that could contain information about Hunter Biden’s relationship with Ukrainian energy company Burisma. But, the Biden Administration, which could put a stop to it by invoking executive privilege.
The records, which include almost 300 full or partial emails that mention Burisma, date back to 2014, when Joe Biden was serving as vice president in the Obama Administration. According to a letter that the archives sent to the Biden White House and the Obama Foundation in November, NARA is proposing to release the records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for emails that contain the word “Burisma”.
According to Reuters, Hunter Biden’s company received monthly payments of US$83,333 for 18 months while he was on Burisma’s board, a total of US$1.5 million. Burisma appears to have paid an additional US$1.5 million to a business associate of Hunter Biden’s, Devon Archer, who was also on the company’s board.
The Burisma emails are, of course, only one of the many ongoing Hunter Biden controversies. The Justice Department has an open criminal investigation, which is reportedly focusing on foreign lobbying and tax matters. House Republicans have promised to launch their own far-reaching inquiry into Hunter Biden’s finances and tumultuous personal life, and some of Hunter Biden’s allies are discussing ways to counter-attack. And the recent disclosure of what appear to be internal corporate emails from Twitter have put new scrutiny on the company’s decision to censor posts about Hunter Biden’s laptop immediately before the 2020 election. Biden’s supporters raised concerns at the time that the material from the laptop could be fabricated, or that it was Russian disinformation. Neither of those claims have been substantiated.
