President Joe Biden was exposed last year for using secret aliases and pseudonyms to send and receive emails while he was the vice president, potentially in violation of strict federal regulations on the use of private email addresses by government employees.

A trove of newly released Biden emails over the holiday weekend revealed that the then-vice president received "sensitive," albeit not classified, information from aides via his fictiously named Gmail accounts, according to Just the News.

Those messages, most of which date from 2012, were released by the National Archives in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed last year by the Southeastern Legal Foundation -- though they are not alone in the effort to uncover the incumbent president's prior secretive email practices.

"Sensitive" information discussed in Biden alias emails transmitted on private servers

Just the News reported that while none of the recently released documents bore classification markings, several contained sensitive information sent and received over unsecured private email servers that would be deemed highly valuable and useful if intercepted by "foreign powers and hostile spy agencies."

They included information about federal emergency responses and preparedness, revealed possible rifts within the Obama administration, and detailed U.S. intelligence about the happenings and inner workings of certain foreign nations and peoples.

The outlet observed that neither President Biden nor his White House has offered any sort of explanation or excuse for why the then-vice president chose to use a variety of fake names to send and receive emails on a private server.

FOIA lawsuit filed last year

In August 2023, the Southeastern Legal Foundation announced that it had filed a FOIA lawsuit against the National Archives after that federal agency dragged its feet in response to initial requests for documents that included then-VP Biden's use of several different aliases and pseudonyms.

That initial request was made in 2021, and though the National Archives had acknowledged its possession of more than 5,000 potentially responsive documents, it refused to hand them over.

SLF's General Counsel Kimberly Hermann said at the time, "All too often, public officials abuse their power by using it for their personal or political benefit. When they do, many seek to hide it. The only way to preserve governmental integrity is for NARA to release Biden’s nearly 5,400 emails to SLF and thus the public. The American public deserves to know what is in them."

Congressional committees, watchdog groups also probing alias emails

The SLF was not alone in demanding access to the contents of then-VP Biden's fictiously named email accounts, as House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) also issued a press release in August 2023 that shared a letter he sent to the National Archives demanding the unredacted production of all communications and documents it possessed that included one of Biden's pseudonyms -- particularly those involving his family members and their business dealings.

"Joe Biden has stated there was ‘an absolute wall’ between his family’s foreign business schemes and his duties as Vice President, but evidence reveals that access was wide open for his family’s influence peddling," Comer said at the time. "We already have evidence of then-Vice President Biden speaking, dining, and having coffee with his son’s foreign business associates. We also know that Hunter Biden and his associates were informed of then-Vice President Biden’s official government duties in countries where they had a financial interest. The National Archives must provide these unredacted records to further our investigation into the Biden family’s corruption."

It wasn't until December 2023, according to a Fox News report, that the National Archives got around to meeting Comer's demands, largely because of pressure applied by the revelations of IRS whistleblowers to the House Ways and Means Committee about what had been discovered in the years-long federal investigation of Hunter Biden's dubious foreign dealings.

The whistleblowers provided the committee with evidence that showed that then-VP Biden routinely used the alias email accounts to communicate with his son and his son's business partners.

Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch also got in on the act with a FOIA lawsuit of its own, and reported in January that it had obtained hundreds of emails from the National Archives that confirmed Biden's usage of fake names to hide his familial communications. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said at the time, "Joe Biden’s alias emails show Joe Biden and his family had a close working relationship on government matters," and added, "No wonder the Biden administration had been hiding these emails from Congress and the American people."