Newly Revealed Biden Emails Are ‘Smoking Gun’ Evidence: Former Intel. Chief

The former U.S. Director of National Intelligence claims emails between Hunter Biden and a pseudonymous email account tied to his father, President Joe Biden, represent the “smoking gun” evidence congressional investigators have been seeking to tie the president to his son’s overseas business dealings during his time as vice president.

What former Trump official John Ratcliffe failed to mention, however, is that the emails in question have little to do with any foreign business deals—or even said what he alleged they said.

On Thursday, the Republican-led House Committee on Oversight and Accountability’s chairman, James Comer, wrote to the National Archives and Records Administration asking them to provide a number of unredacted versions of emails NARA had previously released from Biden’s time as vice president relating to Ukraine and natural gas company Burisma, with whom the younger Biden had a business relationship.

In those emails, an account belonging to a “Robert L. Peters” (since revealed to be a pseudonym for Joe Biden at the time) was occasionally CC’ed, something House Republicans have claimed was concrete proof Biden was apprised of his son’s business dealings. It also plays into House Republicans’ allegations that the Bidens were involved in an extensive influence-peddling scheme in which Hunter Biden used access to his father as a lure to secure lucrative business deals to enrich himself and the former vice president.

House Republicans have so far failed to prove a concrete link.

Testimony by their own star witness, former Burisma board member Devon Archer, seemed to contradict claims the vice president had a direct role in any of their business dealings.

The contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which serve as the basis of the investigation, have already been made public, and House investigators already likely have much of the evidence NARA is reportedly refusing to release.

And one email unearthed in a tranche of emails tied to Burisma with the vice president CC’ed—now being touted as a smoking gun by critics of the Bidens—has nothing to do with a business deal at all: it relates to a scheduled appointment between Biden and a Ukrainian official prior to a gathering at the family’s Delaware vacation home to mark the anniversary of the passing of Hunter’s brother, Beau.

Ratcliffe, however, claimed that evidence alone was likely enough to suspect something nefarious.

“These are Joe Biden’s documents. One of the emails on the NARA website is literally titled, ’emails between Vice President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden regarding Ukraine and Burisma,'” Ratcliffe told Fox News host Laura Ingraham in an interview Thursday night. “I mean, that’s not a smoking gun, that’s a smoking gun and the bloody knife. I mean, that’s really significant evidence that we really shouldn’t just be finding about now. I think it’s a shame that it’s Jamie Comer and House Republicans doing the investigating.”

Newsweek has reached out to the White House press office via email for comment. However, a cursory review of Ratcliffe’s comments shows he’s incorrect on several key points.

The email title on the NARA website was never written by either Biden: it was the title of the information requested and subsequently released by NARA officials under the Freedom of Information Act, and was likely language drafted by the requester themselves. And the emails themselves, like much of the evidence unearthed in Republicans’ inquiry to date, are not new: Biden’s pseudonym had already been reported in initial stories by the New York Post, which first reported on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2021.

But Ratcliffe, a former far-right Congressman whose brief term in the Trump administration was hindered by questions about his credibility and expertise, has a well-documented history of misrepresenting facts, including about his own background.

During early congressional hearings, his qualifications to serve as Director of National Intelligence were closely scrutinized, including allegations he had extensively embellished his credentials as a former federal prosecutor in East Texas, including demonstrably false claims of having deep involvement in George W. Bush’s counterterrorism operations despite having no significant national security prosecutions in that jurisdiction during his tenure.

Earlier in the week, Ratcliffe also bizarrely claimed in a Fox News interview that U.S. Attorney of Delaware and current Department of Justice special counsel David Weiss—a Trump appointee who has been investigating alleged crimes by Hunter Biden since 2018—was formerly the younger Biden’s defense attorney, a claim that has zero basis in fact.