DoJ is concealing documents that lay bare Hunter and Jim Biden’s payoffs with China and Russia

The Justice Department is trying to prevent the release of 400 pages of confidential documents about Hunter and Jim Biden’s dealings with China, Russia and Ukraine by pretending they don’t exist.

Colorado attorney Kevin Evans sued the department in March after it failed to comply with his request for records about the Bidens’ Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) dealings.

Evans, a FOIA expert, requested documents relating to “any relationship, communication, gift(s) and/or remuneration in any form” between the president’s son Hunter or brother Jim and China, Russia or Ukraine.

He said government lawyers first admitted in court to having at least 400 pages of “potentially relevant” documents, but are now trying to get away with saying they cannot “confirm or deny” the existence of any records matching their application.

A Justice Department prosecutor, David Weiss, is currently considering a criminal case against Hunter with possible charges of money laundering, illegal foreign lobbying and tax crimes in connection with First Son’s foreign business dealings.

The 400 pages are not the only cache of Biden records the government is looking for.

The National Archives and Records Administration is preparing to release hundreds of internal documents from the Obama White House containing information about Hunter’s relationship with the controversial Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Business Insider reported this month.

Joe Biden was vice president at the time, responsible for relations with Ukraine. His son was serving on the Burisma board of directors and was being paid $83,000 per month.

The Biden administration can veto the publication, but must decide in February whether to invoke executive privilege to keep them hidden until 2029.

The records date back to 2014 and include 69 images and 260 emails mentioning Burisma.

Evans’ case has its next hearing in January.

The Greenwood Village, Colorado-based attorney said he filed his FOIA request in November 2020 after reading about the Bidens’ foreign business dealings, and was lobbied by the Justice Department for nearly two years before finally I will sue them.

“They eventually produced about 60 pages of documents, but they are all letters from senators and congressmen asking about Hunter, and letters from the Department of Justice back,” he said.

Then, late last year, they said, “well, we’ve got these 400 pages of potentially responsive documents, we need to review them.”

“In March I filed a lawsuit, and before the coroner Michael Hegarty they made the same representation: They did an exhaustive search, they discovered 400 potentially sensitive documents.”

Evans said the government wavered for a few more months, then put forward a confusing new argument: that they could “neither confirm nor deny” the existence of any records.

Government agencies have legal precedent for making such claims to prevent disclosures that could harm national security.

The precedent goes back to a 1975 Los Angeles Times story about a salvage ship secretly built by the CIA to recover a sunken Soviet submarine.

The newspaper filed a FOIA request about it, and the agency responded that it could neither “confirm nor deny” that it had records on the ship, the USNS Hughes Glomar Explorer. The response, upheld by the courts, became known as the “Glomar Response”.

“I don’t know how the hell they can now take the position that Glomar is applicable,” Evans said. “To me, it looks like the cat is out of the bag here having revealed that the documents exist.”

But the lawyer believes that the government will try to prevent the disclosure of the documents even so.

“I’m pretty sure they’ll request summary judgment on the FOIA privacy waivers in an effort to avoid having to produce these documents,” he said.

“But I don’t think they should in this case, particularly when they have disclosed and recorded that there are potentially receptive documents.

‘The problem is that the FOIA has become a vehicle without teeth. The courts do not follow the spirit of the law, they are more inclined to do everything they can to accept the government’s position rather than force disclosure.’

Emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop obtained by DailyMail.com and whistleblower testimony show he was involved in a multi-billion dollar deal with a Chinese oil giant closely linked to the Chinese government.

Bank records show Hunter’s Chinese business partners wired $10 million to their joint venture.

And whistleblower emails, text messages and accounts suggest Joe was aware of the deal and may even have been involved.

The most infamous example is a 2017 email from one of Hunter’s business partners, James Gilliar, who suggested that Hunter would hold a 10% equity stake in the deal on behalf of the “big guy,” a reference to his father.