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The National Archives has located tens of thousands of emails that Joe Biden used while using a pseudonym in a major budding scandal that could dwarf the one involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
“Under legal pressure, the National Archives has located 82,000 pages of emails that President Joe Biden sent or received during his vice presidential tenure on three private pseudonym accounts, a total that potentially dwarfs the amount that landed Hillary Clinton in hot water a decade ago, according to a federal court filing released Monday,” Just the News reported.
The nonprofit public interest law firm Southeastern Legal Foundation filed a status report in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the National Archives and Records Administration on Monday that included the total number of Biden’s private email exchanges, according to the outlet.
The organization brought the lawsuit so it could gain access to the emails after Just the News revealed about a year ago that Joe Biden used three pseudonym email accounts — [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected] — while serving as President Barack Obama’s VP.
The report was filed in federal court in Atlanta on Monday, Just the News said, adding that it is the first one providing a glimpse into the scope of potential government business Biden conducted using phony names and private email accounts, perhaps in violation of federal transparency statutes.
“NARA has completed a search for potentially responsive documents and is currently processing those documents to produce non-exempt portions of any responsive records on a monthly rolling basis,” says the report. “Given the scope of Plaintiff’s FOIA request, which seeks copies of all emails in three separate accounts over eight years, the volume of potentially responsive records is necessarily large.
“NARA has identified approximately 82,000 pages of potentially responsive documents, and it is currently processing those documents and preparing any non-exempt responsive documents for production on a rolling basis,” the filing noted further.
The use of private email accounts by government officials is discouraged under the law. Also, federal officials like Biden are supposed to preserve all of their government-related communications, including emails, on private accounts under the Federal Records Act. Just the News speculated that because NARA had such a large collection of Biden’s emails, it likely meant he gave them to the agency.
“The total revealed by the Archives, however, is stunning in size, even dwarfing the total from the most infamous private email scandal in American history involving former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, which also involved government business on Obama’s watch,” the outlet reported.
The State Department inspector general reported in the summer of 2016 ahead of Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump that she improperly utilized a private email server she had stored in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home to conduct regular government business. The IG also found that she deleted thousands of emails sent through the server, including many that were under congressional subpoena at the time.
“Secretary Clinton produced to the Department from her email account approximately 55,000 hard-copy pages, representing approximately 30,000 emails that she believed related to official business,” the final report noted, a number that is far below the number of private Biden emails uncovered thus far.
Just the News added: “Internal investigations concluded that about 100 emails Clinton moved through her private server contained information that should have been deemed classified at the time they were sent, including 65 emails at the ‘Secret’ level and 22 at ‘Top Secret’ security clearance.”
There is no indication thus far that any of Biden’s emails sent under a pseudonym contained classified information, Just the News reported. That said, Biden remains under investigation by special counsel Robert Hur for allegedly mishandling classified documents as a senator and vice president that were found in his home and an office he used in Washington, D.C.
