Were Joe Biden’s classified memos valuable to Hunter’s clients? Congress wants to know

Nearly a year after the American public was informed that Joe Biden had classified documents at his home and think tank office, lawmakers in Congress have a pressing question: Was there anything in those memos valuable to his son Hunter’s overseas business clients?

The issue catapulted to prominence recently when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, showed up at the House Oversight Committee’s first impeachment inquiry hearing and said there was real reason to fear that Hunter Biden’s clients had an interest in the memos that Joe Biden improperly secreted away at his home and office.

“Obviously, his son was receiving payments from Romania, Russia, Ukraine, China," Turner said last month. "If there are in those documents that relate to, for example, the prosecutor in Ukraine or Burisma itself or other aspects of Ukraine or any of the parties or individuals obviously, that were making payments to Hunter Biden, that would be relevant, wouldn’t it?"

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told Just the News that he is now pressing the Justice Department and Special Counsel Robert Hur, who is investigating the Biden classified documents, to reveal to Congress the subjects and nature of the memos.

The Biden White House has refused to give Congress any detailed information about the documents, and frustrations are growing.

“Well, that's the question we have to the Special Counsel,” Comer told the Just the News, No Noise television show on Thursday. “We need to know exactly what type of information the President had mishandled. We need to know were any of these documents related to any of the people or countries that Joe Biden's family received substantial payments from.

“If so then then we have a big problem on our hands here,” he added.

While Joe and Hunter Biden deny they did anything wrong, there has been concern about a 2014 memo located on Hunter Biden‘s laptop turned over to the FBI that several GOP senators have said reads like a government briefing on sensitive Ukraine issues. 

“When I read the email, very, very detailed analysis of what’s happening in Ukraine. Actually, far more detailed than anything I got as a U.S. senator from the State Department as a scene setter prior to going into Ukraine or any other foreign country,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said earlier this year.

“This email reads as if it was cut-and-pasted from an official government briefing. An official government briefing that one would infer his father had received,” Johnson said.

The Washington Post, however, and other Biden defenders suggest the information in the Ukraine email could very well have come from open source information, not government intelligence.

Comer said part of the concern is that the National Archives has now revealed it has as many as 29,000 emails between Joe Biden, when he was vice president, and Hunter Biden and his business partners, a pernicious communication system that lawmakers fear could have been abused to transmit sensitive government information between father and son.

“Joe Biden as vice president was communicating excessively with Hunter Biden and his associates, who were, you know, peddling access to Joe Biden for enemies all around the world,” Comer said. “So we need to know if part of these payments were received in exchange for classified information.

“I think that's a simple question that shouldn't be hard to answer. So we need to try to know exactly what documents the president mishandled and what he had in his possession.”

Adding further to lawmakers’ consternation is the fact that the original narrative that the Biden White House gave America and Congress about the discovery of the documents is now contradicted by public evidence.

The White House claims it did not discover the documents until November 2022, and aides then waited several weeks before notifying the public.

Comer revealed last week in a letter to the Justice Department that the Biden White House actually first began reviewing the documents back in March 2021, and at least five officials had involvement with the memos over the next 18 months.

Here’s the full timeline:​

March 18, 2021— Annie Tomasini (Assistant to the President) visited the Penn Biden Center to take inventory of President Biden’s documents.

May 6, 2021— NARA asks Donald Trump to turn over any Presidential records he kept when leaving the White House, according to AP.

January 17, 2022— Donald Trump turns over 15 boxes of documents to NARA. The documents are found to include some with classified markings.

February 9, 2022— NARA refers the Trump documents case to the Justice Department.

March 30, 2022— The FBI opens its investigation into Trump over the classified documents.

April 11, 2022— The White House Counsel’s office asks NARA to facilitate access to the 15 boxes of material taken from Mar-a-Lago.

May 24, 2022— Dana Remus (former White House Counsel and Assistant to the President) contacted Kathy Chung (Department of Defense, former Assistant to Vice President Biden) to retrieve Biden’s documents from the Penn Biden Center.

August 8, 2022— Former President Trump’s estate, Mar-a-Lago, is raided by the FBI as part of its investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified information.

June 28, 2022— Kathy Chung travels to the Penn Biden Center to collect the documents.

June 30, 2022— Dana Remus, Anthony Bernal (Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the First Lady), and another White House employee went to Penn Biden Center to collect the documents, but could not fit them in their vehicle.

October 12, 2022— Ashley Williams (Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Oval Office Operations) and Pat Moore (President Biden’s personal attorney) went to Penn Biden Center to do “the next wave of assessing of files and looking at boxes.”

October 13, 2022— Ashley Williams returns to the Penn Biden Center and left with some of the boxes.

October 13, 2022— Bob Bauer (President Biden’s personal attorney) texted Kathy Chung that Pat Moore had begun his sorting through the boxes at the center.

November 2, 2022— President Biden’s attorneys claim they “unexpectedly discovered” documents from the Obama-Biden Administration at the Penn Biden Center and notified NARA of the “discovery."