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America’s Public Records Laws Are Too Broken to Keep Up With Presidents’ Emails

Top officials have a lot of power over what is actually archived.

House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky.
GOP House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer has requested emails from Joe Biden’s aliases from the National Archives. Carolyn Kaster/AP

In June 2014, Hunter Biden sent an email to his dad proposing a candidate for a job at the White House. Then-Vice President Joe Biden responded within less than a half-hour, writing back simply: “Re Johnny call me right away, Dad.”

John McGrail — a Georgetown classmate of Hunter’s who was then a senior lawyer at the Treasury Department — was hired as deputy counsel to the vice president that August, according to his LinkedIn.

The public knows about the email, sent from one of Biden’s Gmail accounts, because of the leaked materials on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Less clear, however, is whether this exchange — between family members, but about White House personnel decisions — was recorded in the National Archives for posterity. Or whether it needed to be at all.