Hunter Biden’s Ex-Business Partner Testifies Joe Biden Often Joined Business Calls with His Son

Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, testified to Congress on Monday that Hunter put his father, President Joe Biden, on the phone to impress clients more than 20 times over the span of 10 years.

Summary

Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, testified to Congress on Monday that Hunter put his father, President Joe Biden, on the phone to impress clients more than 20 times over the span of 10 years.

• This revelation, given under penalty of perjury in a closed-door congressional hearing, directly contradicts Biden’s previous claims that he’d “never spoken” to Hunter about “his overseas business dealings.”
• GOP Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told Fox News that Archer’s testimony confirmed that President Biden “lied to the American people when he said he had no knowledge about his son’s business dealings and was not involved.”
• Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman, who before winning his House seat in 2022 served as the lead prosecutor at the first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump, called on Comer to release the transcript of the hearing “rather than continue to send out misinformation.”
• Goldman claimed the transcript proves “Joe Biden had nothing to do with Hunter Biden’s business dealings.” How Goldman reconciles that claim with Archer’s testimony that Biden spoke with his son and business associates on more than 20 occasions is unclear.
• Goldman told the press Hunter Biden merely sought to create “the illusion of access” to his father, (which became the quote of choice for many mainstream outlets) although being able to call the then-vice president on speakerphone during a business meeting to demonstrate one’s influence could also simply be called “access.”
• Archer also testified that the younger Biden frequently used his father’s “brand” to secure a lucrative contract with Ukrainian energy company Burisma. As Chairman Comer put it, “Joe Biden was ‘the brand’ that his son sold around the world to enrich the Biden family.”
• Hunter’s former business partner claimed he had no knowledge of the alleged $5 million bribe paid to Biden from Burisma that a confidential FBI source told the Bureau, according to an internal FBI form released by the Oversight Committee in June.

• Interestingly, the New York Times now claims that “It has long been known that the elder Mr. Biden at times interacted with his son’s business partners.” Luke Broadwater wrote that Archer’s testimony “underscored that Mr. Biden had made false or misleading statements regarding his family members’ finances. During the 2020 presidential debate, Mr. Biden claimed that no one in his family had received money from China, when, in fact, Hunter Biden and his business associates took in millions from a Chinese firm.”
• Archer’s attorney, Matthew L. Schwartz, said after the hearing that both parties “are claiming victory following Mr. Archer’s voluntary interview today,” according to CNN. Schwartz said in a statement, “all Devon Archer did was exactly what we said he would: show up and answer the questions put to him honestly and completely… Mr. Archer shared the truth with the Committee, and we will leave to them and others to decide what to do with it.”
• The Washington Post declined to cover the hearing itself (although they did republish the AP’s report), but it did publish an article by Philip Bump attacking the right’s “baseless claim of intimidation” towards Archer ahead of the hearing. Bump was referencing claims by the New York Post’s Miranda Devine that the DOJ was trying to imprison Archer before he could testify, a claim Archer himself “does not agree with,” according to his attorney.

• According to the New York Post, Archer told the committee that Hunter Biden referred to his father as “my guy” when linking him with his foreign business associates. Archer emphasized the importance of the Biden “brand,” and according to committee Republicans he testified that “Burisma would have gone out of business if ‘the brand’ had not been attached to it.”
• Fox News reported Archer testified that Biden and top Burisma executives “called DC“ in 2015 to get the Obama administration to fire Viktor Shokin, the then-prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. Archer testified that days after their call to the then-VP, Biden traveled to Ukraine and urged the government to clean up the prosecutor’s office. Biden has stated publicly that he pressured Ukraine to firing Shokin and threatened to withhold US aid until he was ousted.
• National Review’s Jim Geraghty eviscerated Goldman’s specious claims of Biden’s dealings constituting the “illusion of access.” Geraghty pointed out that “First, this means Biden’s previous pledge, ‘I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses, period,’ was at minimum misleading. The position of the Bidens is that Joe Biden got on the phone with Hunter Biden’s business partners more than 20 times, but business was never discussed in any of those discussions.”

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© Dominic Moore, 2023