As of this writing, the White House has 59 days to respond to a heads-up from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The agency let the Biden administration know about the release of emails that could contain information about Hunter Biden and his relationship with Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company.
According to Business Insider, the records contain hundreds of pages of information from internal documents from the Obama administration in 2014 and include emails that mention Burisma. NARA received a FOIA request for the documents from Stephen Miller, a former Trump advisor and a lawyer for the group America First Legal.
Legal teams for both Obama and Biden have the above-mentioned window of time to assert a claim of executive privilege to prevent the Burisma information from being released. If they take that option, the files will be sealed until January 2029. The Biden administration has so far declined to say whether or not it will move to stop the release. The Obama camp has not returned a request for comment. America First Legal has also yet to respond.
Insider doubted that any document dump would show that Joe Biden exerted pressure on the Ukrainian government to fire prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, who had been in the process of investigating Burisma. Of note, Hunter Biden’s company received a total of $1.5 million while he was a member of the Burisma board. A Hunter Biden associate, Devon Archer, also received $1.5 million. But, the site did suggest that it might prove or disprove Joe Biden’s claim that he did not discuss client matters with his son and that he stayed out of Hunter’s business.
Even if the information does not contain the smoking gun for which Miller or other conservatives have been looking, the Biden administration’s allergy to sunlight will probably result in an invocation of executive privilege. And even if the Biden camp shrugs the matter off, what would change? The White House can always rely on a complicit media and an American public that has a penchant for only reading “above the fold” to make sure that anything of substance disappears.
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