Records Show that Joe Biden Used Email Alias With Hunter and Brother James
Big Tech, Big Government, Big Brother: Washington’s War on Free Speech
IRS Investigators Subject to Woke Training Featuring Black Trans Prof., Dalai Lama
ICE Data Show Major Drop in Arrests, Removals of Criminal Illegal Immigrants
Records Show that Joe Biden Used Email Alias With Hunter and Brother James
Judicial Watch received 426 pages of records from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) that show then-Vice President Joe Biden using an email alias to correspond with family members, including son Hunter and brother James.
These alias emails show Joe Biden and his family had a close working relationship on government matters. No wonder the Biden administration had been hiding these emails from Congress and the American people!
Of course, we had to go to court to get these records (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. National Archives (No. 1:23-cv-01432)).
The emails we received also show that Joe Biden signed off on the cessation of Secret Service protection for Hunter Biden and Beau Biden’s daughter Natalie during an August 2016 trip to Kosovo.
These emails include messages to Jim and Hunter Biden regarding the then-vice president’s schedule and meetings. Some emails show Biden using the alias: robinware456@gmail.com.
The emails also show that Hunter and James Biden accompanied Joe Biden on taxpayer-funded trips. Moreover, they show that then-Vice President Biden in December 2009 emailing an aide after he forgot the password to his West Wing computer.
The records show that Hunter Biden used an email address (hbiden@rosemontseneca.com) from his now-dissolved firm Rosemont Seneca Partners.
The records also show that James Biden used an email address (jbiden@lionhallgp.com) tied to his consulting firm Lion Hall, which had been the subject of an FBI bribery investigation in the 1990s.
Most of the 210 Biden vice presidential email messages we received were redacted due to Presidential Records Act (PRA) restrictions and applicable FOIA exemptions, which specify what material may be released to the public.
Previously, we released five pages of records that show then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter received a May 26, 2016, email detailing a scheduled “8:45 am prep for a 9 am phone call with Pres Poroshenko,” who was the president of Ukraine. Joe Biden’s email address is the alias robert.l.peters@pci.gov, Hunter Biden’s email account is disclosed as hbiden@rosemontseneca.com. (Hunter Biden was on the board of the controversial Ukrainian firm Burisma at the time.)
In an August 18, 2016, email sent from his Rosemont Seneca email address to Secret Service Assistant Director of the Office of Investigations Jeremy Sherida, Hunter Biden writes: “Thank you. Both the Vice President and I sign off on the agreed upon requested interruption in protection for Natalie and Hunter.” The interruption in protection was from August 18 to August 22, 2016, during their trip to Kosovo and was to resume up their return to Washington, D.C., on August 22, 2016. The Biden family was in Kosovo where the country erected a statue of and named a highway after Beau Biden. It is not known where Hunter Biden and Natalie Biden went without their Secret Service detail.
In previous litigation, we found that, for the first five-and-a-half years of the Obama administration, Hunter Bidentraveled extensively while receiving a Secret Service protective detail. During the time period of the records provided in that litigation, Hunter Biden took 411 separate domestic and international flights to 29 foreign countries. He visited China five times.
In the current batch of records, an email from Michele Smith, executive assistant to the vice president, dated June 24, 2011, was titled “News piece and wire photos from the first Greece stop.” The email is addressed to Hunter Biden, Beau Biden, Hallie Biden, and Kathleen Biden. The email contains two attachments, which are photos of Jill Biden with U.S. troops on the USS Ramage. The email is a news release concerning Jill Biden arriving in Greece for the 2011 Special Olympic Games. Prior to attending the “Flame of Hope” lighting ceremony, Mrs. Biden visited the USS Ramage, a destroyer anchored off the Faliro Marina in southern coastal Athens. Biden told the crew members of the destroyer she was looking forward to attending the Special Olympic Games.
An email from Michele Smith, dated October 24, 2010, was addressed to James Biden. The subject of the email is “Tomorrow’s Schedule – safe travels.” The email is an itinerary for then-Vice President Joe Biden and James Biden for one-day travel from the VP’s private residence in Delaware to Orlando, Florida, to address the International Association of Police Chief’s. On the return trip, there were short stops at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport for a dinner visit with Ann McLane Kuster at Norton’s Classic Café followed by a visit to Salon 263, Nashau, New Hampshire. Afterwards, Vice President Biden and Jim Biden returned to his private residence.
An email from Fran Person, Vice President Biden’s personal assistant, dated July 24, 2009, is addressed to Beau Biden and Hunter Biden and is titled, “Fw. A Very Successful Visit.” Two email recipients are redacted. The email is a forward from Antony Blinken, deputy assistant to the president, from Ambassador John Teft regarding Biden’s trip to Tbilisi, capital of the Republic of Georgia. The email states that everyone from President Saakashvili to his most ardent opponents had great things to say about Biden.
An email from Fran Person, dated March 14, 2010, addressed to Hunter Biden is titled “Tomorrow’s, Monday March 15, Latest Schedule.” Two email recipients are redacted from the email. The one-day itinerary involves travel to Cincinnati and Cleveland, Ohio for a meeting with Congressman Steve Driehaus and attending a small reception for Democrat Gov. Ted Strickland at a law office.
An email from Michele Smith, dated November 25, 2009, is addressed to a redacted recipient and CCd to Hunter Biden and Beau Biden and titled “Follow Up.” The email also has a BCC to Joseph R. Biden, Jr., email address redacted. The email is addressed to “Boss” and concerns a possible visit by Sen. John Kerry to Nantucket over the holiday weekend and a call to Ambassador Lou Sussman on Thanksgiving weekend.
An email from Fran Person, dated March 17, 2010, is addressed to Hunter Biden and an additional, redacted recipient and is titled “Tomorrow’s Sched Run thru.” The email has a BCC to Kathleen Biden, email address redacted. The email concerns Hunter traveling with Joe Biden on a one-day trip to a factory in North Carolina to meet Energy Secretary Steven Chu to address workers at the Cree factory and to participate in several media events.
A forwarded email from Fran Person, dated August 19, 2012, is addressed to Joe Biden, Beau Biden, Hunter Biden, Valerie Biden, and James Biden. There are an additional two redacted recipients on the email. The email is titled, “Fw. AP Profile Piece: THE VEEP: A REGULAR AND NOT-SO-REGULAR JOE.
An email from Fran Person, dated May 18, 2012, is addressed to Joe Biden, Beau Biden, Hunter Biden, Valerie Biden, Ashley Biden; Jill Biden, James Biden and wife Sarah Biden. There are numerous redacted recipients on the email. The email is titled “Press Recap” and consists of an attachment with 13 press releases related to Biden that occurred over several days.
An email from Fran Person, dated July 31, 2013, is addressed to Beau Biden, Hunter Biden, and Jill Biden. There are numerous redacted recipients on the email. The email is titled, “FW: OVP Press Recap India/Singapore 2013” and consists of an attachment with 203 pages of press information relating to Biden’s trip to India and Singapore.
An email from Joe Biden dated October 19, 2010, titled “NY Times: As G.O.P seeks spending cuts, details are scarce.” The email is addressed to: Terrell McSweeny, James F. Carney, Jared Bernstein, JACK (redacted), James Biden, Elizabeth Alexander, Evan M. Ryan, Beau Biden, Hunter Biden, and several email administrative groups associated with his staff. The email contains a link to a NY Times article.
An email from Joe Biden dated May 28, 2012, titled “NY Times: West Point is Divided on a War Doctrine’s Fate / great article. Joe. The email is addressed to: Ted (Redacted); Thomas E. Donilon, Antony Blinken, Beau Biden, Hunter Biden, James Biden, Bobbi J. Doorenbos, Bruce N. Reed, John Martilla, Mike Christopher, and Mike Donilon. The email contains a link to a NY Times article.
An email from Joe Biden dated December 27, 2012, titled “Interesting.” The email is addressed to Beau Biden, Hunter Biden, Howard (redacted), Valerie Biden, Ashley (Redacted); Missy (Redacted); and Michael Donilon. The email contained a link to a poll taken by CNN regarding Vice President Biden’s job performance.
An email from Joe Biden dated May 6, 2011, is titled “The Employment Situation In April.” The email is addressed to Beau Biden, Hunter Biden, James Biden, Bobbi J., Bruce N. Reed, JACK (redacted), and Jared Bernstein. The email states, “I thought you would find this interesting” and provides a link to a whitehouse.gov press release.
An email from Joe Biden dated February 22, 2011, titled “NY Times: Why Cuts Don’t Bring Prosperity.” The email is addressed to Ted (Redacted), Thomas E. Donilon, Antony Blinken, Beau Biden, Hunter Biden, James Biden, Elizabeth Alexander, Allan L. Hoffman, Ted Kaufman, Terrell McSweeny, Matthew S. Teper, Mike Donilon, Cynthia Hogan, Ron Klain, Evan M. Ryan, Bruce N. Reed, and Terrell P. McSweeny. The email provides a link to a NY Times article.
An email from Joe Biden dated January 23, 2011, titled “NY Times: Maybe Japan Was Just a Warm-Up.” The email is addressed to Beau Biden, Hunter Biden, James Biden, Jared Bernstein, Jay Carney, Cynthia Hogan, Ted Kaufmann, Terrell P. McSweeny, Courtney O’Donnell, and Evan M. Ryan. The email provides a link to a NY Times article.
In a December 6, 2009, email to Fran Person sent from his alias account champ4@att.blackberry.net on his BlackBerry via AT&T, Joe Biden asks: “What is my password for my west wing computer.” Person responds by sending the password [redacted].
We have nearly a dozen FOIA lawsuits regarding records concerning Biden corruption issues, including:
In March 2023, the Archives had released only 1,276 pages of over 8,000 records about the unprecedented document dispute and raid on the home of former President Trump.
In October 2022, we sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for all communications between the Secret Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding the search warrant which precipitated the raid on former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022.
Also in October 2022, we sued the Barack Obama Presidential Library for Obama White House records about the 2016 “Russia Collusion Hoax.” The records, which by law were not available under FOIA until five years after President Obama left office, are held at the library, which is part of the National Archives system.
We expect more and more documents on Biden family corruption over the next several months so be sure to watch this space closely for updates.
Big Tech, Big Government, Big Brother: Washington’s War on Free Speech
Michah Morrison, our chief investigative reporter, rounds up the evidence in Judicial Watch’s Investigative Bulletin on the Left’s “censorship industrial complex”:
An unprecedented assault on free speech is underway in America. The White House and government agencies play central roles. But because this new war largely takes place in the shadows of cyberspace, unfolding in back offices of social media giants like Facebook, YouTube, Google, TikTok and Twitter, the public has been slow to catch on to the threat.
In recent months, however, the House Judiciary Committee, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and Judicial Watch have each issued findings that break new ground. Taken together, they go a long way to dragging the war on the First Amendment into the sunlight. The main target of the new censorship efforts? Conservative speech, speakers, and viewpoints.
“The Weaponization of ‘Disinformation,’” a November report of the Judiciary Committee, concludes that the “world’s largest social media platforms…intentionally suppressed” constitutionally protected speech “as a consequence of the federal government’s direct coordination.”
The Fifth Circuit Court agrees. In State of Missouri v. Biden et al—an eye-opening October ruling that did not get the attention it deserved—the Court found that “the White House likely (1) coerced [social media] platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences, and (2) significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes, both in violation of the First Amendment.”
Also in October, Judicial Watch released a groundbreaking four-part documentary “Censored and Controlled,” detailing the coordinated effort by Big Tech and the government to suppress debate on elections, Covid-19 information, and news of the Hunter Biden laptop. The documentary details efforts by Big Tech to censor content, exposing collusion between the government and social media to suppress what Americans can see and hear.
The House report demonstrates, step by step, how the Department of Homeland Security worked with other government entities, Stanford University, and Big Tech to create an elaborate system to suppress speech. These efforts were centered in a group with a name straight out of Orwell: the Election Integrity Partnership.
The EIP was a consortium of academics led by Stanford University that worked “directly” with Homeland Security and the State Department “to monitor and censor American’s online speech,” the House report noted. “The EIP’s operation was straightforward: ‘external stakeholders,’ including federal agencies and organizations funded by the federal government, submitted [alleged] misinformation reports directly to the EIP. The EIP’s misinformation ‘analysts’ next scoured the internet for additional examples for censorship. If the submitted report flagged a Facebook post, for example, the EIP analysts searched for similar content on Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, and other major social media platforms. Once all of the offending links were compiled, the EIP sent the most significant ones directly to Big Tech with specific recommendations on how the social media platforms should censor the posts….”
The pressure from Big Tech “was largely directed in a way that benefitted one side of the political aisle: true information posted by Republicans and conservatives was labeled as ‘misinformation’ while false information posted by Democrats and liberals was largely unreported and untouched by the censors.” The EIP targeted “candidates and commentators with conservative viewpoints.” The report lists the targeted figures, which included Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, and Judicial Watch’s own Tom Fitton.
Last week, Judicial Watch sued the Department of Homeland Security for failing to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request for all its records regarding JW and Tom. “Judicial Watch and I have been censored again and again by government and Big Tech,” Tom said in a statement. “That we had to file a federal lawsuit to get basic information about this targeting is another sure sign that [Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Agency] has been up to no good.”
The Fifth Circuit ruling also puts on the record many facts about the new censorship efforts. The court ruled in favor of the secretaries of state of Missouri and Louisiana and five social media users who alleged “that numerous federal officials coerced social-media platforms into censoring certain social- media content, in violation of the First Amendment.”
The ruling details pressure on Big Tech from the White House, the FBI, the Surgeon General’s Office, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Homeland Security. Each office, the ruling finds, “violated the First Amendment.”
The Court noted, for example, that in one email “a White House official told a platform to take a post down ‘ASAP,’ and instructed it to ‘keep an eye out for tweets that fall in this same genre’ so that they could be removed, too. In another, an official told a platform to ‘remove [an] account immediately’—he could not ‘stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved immediately.’ Often, those requests for removal were met.”
The White House stepped up the pressure in 2021, the court noted. It “started monitoring the platforms’ moderation activities…. In that vein, the officials asked for—and received—frequent updates from the platforms. Those updates revealed, however, that the platforms’ policies were not clear-cut and did not always lead to content being demoted. So, the White House pressed the platforms. For example, one White House official demanded more details and data on Facebook’s internal policies at least twelve times, including to ask what was being done to curtail ‘dubious’ or ‘sensational’ content, what ‘interventions’ were being taken, what ‘measurable impact’ the platforms’ moderation policies had, ‘how much content [was] being demoted,’ and what ‘misinformation’ was not being downgraded.”
Judicial Watch has been fighting the freedom of speech battle with major lawsuits. And in October, JW premiered “Censored and Controlled,” a four-part documentary that takes the viewer deep inside government censorship efforts, detailing controversies over free speech suppression on the site then known as Twitter, election interference, Covid-19, and the Hunter Biden laptop.
Clearly, Big Tech is “censoring content,” Tom Fitton told the filmmakers. It is “not following a set of rules but following government dictates and their own ideological predilections and political biases.”
The war over free speech and Big Tech is sure to grow more heated in 2024 with a presidential election, a crisis on the southern border, and wars in Ukraine and Israel. The stakes could not be higher. We’ll be watching closely.
View the Judicial Watch documentary, Censored and Controlled, here.
Read “The Weaponization of Disinformation,” Interim Report of the House Judiciary Committee, here.
Read United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, State of Missouri et al v. Joseph R. Biden et al, here.
IRS Investigators Subject to Woke Training Featuring Black Trans Prof., Dalai Lama
Law enforcement agents at the IRS are being abused and distracted with outrageous racialist DEI traine, as our Corruption Chronicles blog exclusively details.
Federal agents charged with investigating money laundering, public corruption, counterterrorism, and narcotics trafficking at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) were pulled from their critical duties to endure woke training that directs them to operate in a culturally inclusive environment and speak up for multiple social identities. The drills focused on equity, diversity, inclusion and justice and instructed agents from the specialized IRS Criminal Investigation (IRSCI) unit to question how much they know about different cultural norms and mores and challenged them with the following inquiries: “Are you prepared adequately to accommodate different cultural expectations and practices?” and “Can you deliver cultural inclusion behaviorally?” The course’s introduction, titled “Cultural Inclusion is About Justice,” was provided by a black transgender professor who asserts in an academic article that the high impact of “whiteness” oppresses trans college students.
Judicial Watch obtained and reviewed material from the controversial special training presented to IRSCI agents as part of mandatory continuing professional education for all staff. A source connected to the Washington D.C. field office provided slides from the specific presentation in that division, which has dozens of agents that investigate crimes throughout the capitol area, including Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. Federal agents—as well as the special agent in charge of the D.C. office—working on high-profile probes involving bribery, embezzlement, illegal kickbacks and dismantling the country’s major drug and money laundering organizations were reluctant to be yanked from their important work to participate in the woke training. “They want us to consider people’s race,” said a veteran investigator whose identity cannot be disclosed. “Criminals don’t discriminate. White collar criminals are mostly what IRSCI goes after.” And they are a diverse bunch, according to government sources interviewed by Judicial Watch.
Nevertheless, in this heated environment of political correctness many government agencies are implementing official woke initiatives under a Biden executive order to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities through the federal government. That includes subjecting government workers to similar equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice training as well as establishing special programs to help the targeted audience. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has formulated a strategy to “advance equity for marginalized and underserved communities” that, among other things, directs federal prosecutors to ignore maximum sentencing under the law to “avoid unwarranted disparities.” The Department of Labor has dedicated $260 million to promote “equitable access” to government unemployment benefits by addressing disparities in the administration and delivery of money by race, ethnicity and language proficiency. The Treasury Department named its first ever racial equity chief, a veteran La Raza official who spent a decade at the nation’s most influential open borders group. The list goes on and on.
The IRSCI training is part of that expansive woke agenda. Criminal investigators at the nation’s tax agency were taught about cross-cultural competence in a section that questioned their cultural behaviors, values, biases, preconceived notions, and personal limitations. “Do you understand the worldview of your culturally different customers/colleagues without negative judgements?” one slide asks. “Can you develop relevant and sensitive intervention strategies and skills with your culturally different customers/colleagues?” Keep in mind these are federal law enforcement agents investigating the perpetrators of serious crimes, not public relations, or human resources representatives. It is difficult to understand how they benefit from this type of training, which also featured a “cultural perceptions” discussion that covered how Mexicans and Taiwanese describe people in the U.S. Answers include rushed, reserved, hard-headed, unemotional, independent, and self-indulgent.
A slide focusing on projection bias includes a quote from the Dalai Lama, the infamous Buddhist monk and Tibetan spiritual leader who recently ignited global outrage after kissing a child on the lips at an event in northern India then asking the boy to suck his tongue. Adjacent to the Dalai Lama’s banner is a deep quote from a diversity, equity and inclusion strategist who claims to be an expert on cultural, racial, religious, gender, generational and sexual orientation. Her message to IRS criminal investigators is “I am not culturally different from you. I am culturally different like you.” Cultural exclusions are discussed in a slide featuring a photo of a black woman who claims wearing her hair naturally was the only thing that defined her in the office and another black woman who refrains from conversations in the office about famous black people to avoid a negative affiliation. A Latina woman says that she tries “not to be regularly seen with other Latinx employees on staff” to avoid a negative association.
ICE Data Show Major Drop in Arrests, Removals of Criminal Illegal Immigrants
You won’t be surprised to learn that the public safety is being put at risk by the Biden border invasion. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has the frightening details.
Besides welcoming record amounts of illegal immigrants into the United States, the Biden administration further compromises national security by arresting and deporting “significantly fewer criminal aliens than the Trump administration,” according to government records obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). In a troubling report published this week the nonpartisan research organization analyzes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) criminal data from the first three years of the Trump administration and the first three years of Biden’s presidency and the results are incredibly worrisome. The records were obtained through the federal law known as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and public stats disclosed by ICE. The Washington D.C. think tank points out that the statistics contradict Biden administration claims that its disastrous immigration policies are designed to focus on criminal aliens.
In fact, back in the fall of 2021 Department of Homeland (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memosaying that new guidelines for the enforcement of civil immigration law better focus resources on the apprehension and removal of noncitizens who are a threat to national security and public safety. Taking a jab at the Trump administration, the beleaguered DHS leader asserted that “for the first time, our guidelines will, in the pursuit of public safety, require an assessment of the individual and take into account the totality of the facts and circumstances.” In the document Mayorkas asserts that the majority of the more than 11 million undocumented or otherwise removable noncitizens in the United States have been contributing members of our communities across the country for years. As the administration strives to provide them with a path to status, the DHS Secretary writes in the directive, it will not work in conflict by spending resources seeking to remove those who do not pose a threat and, in fact, make our nation stronger.
The new CIS report shows that the Biden administration is flat out lying to the American public when it claims it prioritizes arresting and deporting criminal aliens who may pose a threat to national security or public safety. The group’s researchers examined data from fiscal years 2017, 2018 and 2019 then compared it to fiscal years 2021, 2022 and 2023 and found that “criminal aliens have been top beneficiaries of the Biden administration’s agenda.” The study clarifies that a criminal alien is a foreigner who most likely entered the U.S. illegally and has a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges. Under Biden there has been a 67% decrease in deportations of criminal aliens, a 57% reduction in arrests of criminal aliens, a 55% decline in immigration-related criminal convictions and a 44% decrease in detainer requests issued by federal authorities on criminal aliens in the custody of local law enforcement agencies nationwide.
The records show that in the first three years under Trump, ICE removed 485,930 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. By contrast, the agency deported only 158,931 aliens with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges in the first three years of the Biden administration. In Trump’s first three years as president, ICE made 389,237 administrative arrests of undocumented aliens with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. In Biden’s first three years ICE only arrested 165,650 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. In the first three fiscal years under the Trump administration, ICE recorded 19,978 immigration-related criminal arrests, 18,340 indictments, and 17,784 convictions. In Biden’s first three years, ICE registered 7,523 immigration-related criminal arrests, 7,529 indictments, and 8,090 convictions.
Detainers for criminal aliens in local custody also dropped significantly with 484,990 ICE detainer requests in the first three years of Trump’s tenure and 270,127 in Biden’s first three years. Offenses committed by the illegal immigrants are broken down and include thousands arrested for driving under the influence, sexual assault, robbery, homicide, weapons crimes, possession of dangerous drugs, kidnapping, larceny, and a multitude of other serious crimes. The Biden administration’s policy of arresting fewer criminal aliens clearly resulted in fewer deportations of that demographic and “increased threat to public safety and national security,” CIS writes in its report. “The dramatic decrease in removals has also sent a strong message to people overseas that unlawful entry into the United States comes with a decreased risk of deportation, undoubtedly contributing to the unprecedented mass illegal immigration that is occurring under the Biden administration,” according to CIS.
Until next week,