Obama Letter Calls Out GOP-Led Senate Investigation Into Biden as Legitimizing ‘Russian Disinformation Campaign’

Former president Barack Obama sent a stinging letter to the Senate objecting to its request for presidential records related to the Republican-led investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s Ukraine dealings, which have been revisited after President Donald Trump’s 2019 impeachment for abuse of power and obstruction on Congress.

Per a report from BuzzFeed News, Obama’s post-presidential office sent an official response in late March to the Senate slamming the document request and effectively branding the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s probe into Biden as a political hit job aimed at the now-presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee.

“The request for early release of presidential records in order to give credence to a Russian disinformation campaign — one that has already been thoroughly investigated by a bipartisan congressional committee — is without precedent,” the letter said. “This use of the special access process serves no legitimate purpose, and does not outweigh or justify infringing confidentiality interests that all presidents have sought to protect.”

Biden’s push to force out a Ukrainian Prosecutor General who was accused of aiding and abetting widespread corruption had widespread support within the Obama administration, the European community, and had bipartisan support in Congress. In fact, one of the senators leading the current probe of Biden, Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson, signed on to a 2016 letter echoing Biden’s aggressive anti-corruption efforts in that country.

Despite these objections, however, Obama’s office has been complying with the request and has provided more than 9,000 pages of records since March. The decision to acquiesce to the alleged partisan request, the letter added, was “in the interest of countering the misinformation campaign underlying this request.”