National Archives Withheld Biden Photos After Targeting Trump over Documents

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) withheld photographs of then-Vice President Joe Biden meeting business associates of his son, Hunter Biden, in China until after the 2024 election — but pursued then-former President Donald Trump over records that eventually became the subject of a major federal prosecution.

As Breitbart News reported last week, NARA was forced to release some of the photographs after a lawsuit by the America First Legal foundation:

The photos — only a partial archive — were released in response to a lawsuit filed by Stephen Miller’s America First Legal foundation against the National Archives and Records Administration in 2022.

They shed new light on the Biden family’s history of influence-peddling, which dates back to the Obama administration, and which Democrats denied as they impeached President Donald Trump and claimed Hunter’s laptop was Russian “disinformation.”

America First noted in a statement: “Lawyers and representatives for President Biden and President [Barack] Obama delayed NARA’s release of these photographs, as they did with other records, until after Election Day.”

But NARA was quite willing to threaten former President Trump with prosecution in 2021, simply for holding onto records that he believed were his. From the New York Times timeline of the “documents” case, in “late 2021”:

Officials at the archives warn Mr. Trump’s representatives that there could be a referral to the Justice Department or an alert to Congress if the former president continues to refuse to comply with the Presidential Records Act.

…

The archives informs the Justice Department, which asks President Biden to request that the archives provide the F.B.I. with access to the boxes for examination. Later, when the Justice Department reviews the materials, investigators come to believe they have not recovered everything that Mr. Trump must return.

NARA’s intervention was key to the launch of the case against Trump, complete with an FBI raid of his private home at Mar-a-Lago.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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