In a closed meeting with the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer reportedly told lawmakers then-Vice President Joe Biden participated in phone calls more than 20 times in an effort to sell what Archer called “the brand.”
“Devon Archer’s testimony today confirms Joe Biden lied to the American people when he said he had no knowledge about his son’s business dealings and was not involved,” committee chairman Rep. James Comer told reporters after the deposition.
Countering that claim, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) delivered a different version of Archer's testimony. The only Democrat to sit in on the deposition, Goldman confirmed to reporters Biden was involved in phone calls but recalled Archer told the House committee the Vice President was "asked to say hello" on the phone and talked about the weather to business partners on the other end of the phone.
In the same press conference, a reporter pressed Goldman that he was contradicting Joe Biden's past statements that he never talked to his son's business associates.
"It's kind of a preposterous premise," Goldman countered, "to think a father should not 'hello' to people that the son had dinner with, and that is literally all the evidence is."
The public now knows those supposed business partners are crooked, wealthy business tycoons all over the world who somehow had the ear of the drug-addicted son of the vice president of the United States.
Goldman is being mocked on social media for admitting Joe Biden's involvement with Hunter's business deals in front of TV cameras, a fact Joe Biden first denied in 2019.
“First of all, I have never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their business, period,” Biden said at the time. “There wasn’t any hint of scandal at all when we were there (in the Obama Administration). It was the same kind of strict, strict rules. That’s why I never talk with my son or my brother or anyone else, even distant family about their business interest, period.”
A month later, Biden became agitated in repeating the claim to Fox News reporter Peter Doocy.
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings. You should be looking at Trump. Trump’s doing this because he knows I’ll beat him like a drum. Everybody’s looked at it and said there’s nothing there. Ask the right question.”
Ukrainian energy company Burisma is at the epicenter of the scandal. Despite no experience in the energy sector, Hunter Biden joined the Burisma board in 2014.
A year later, Burisma executives pressured Hunter Biden to enlist the help of Vice President Joe Biden to get Ukraine government officials to fire a prosecutor who was investigating possible corruption within Burisma.
Joe Biden leveraged $1B in U.S. aid to Ukraine to get the country to oust prosecutor Viktor Shokin. In a public setting, Biden explained in a now-famous video clip how things went down.
According to Comer, Archer testified Monday that Hunter Biden and Burisma executives Mykola Zlochevsky and Vadym Pozharski “called D.C.” to discuss the matter prior to Shokin’s removal.
It is also no small issue that Democrats on Capitol Hill impeached Donald Trump for his famous phone call, when he urged Ukraine's president to investigate the Bidens over the Burisma deal.
Archer: Burisma would not have survived without ‘Big Guy’
Comer said Archer testified that “Burisma would have gone out of business if ‘the brand’ had not been attached to it."
Hunter Biden’s business dealings are big business. An NBC news analysis last year of documents released by Senate Republicans showed that Hunter Biden took in $11 million between 2013 and 2018 for his roles as an attorney and board member with Burisma, and for his work with a Chinese businessman now accused of fraud.
Earlier this year, Comer (pictured at right) released House Oversight Committee findings of an alleged multi-million dollar influence-peddling scheme that involved nine Biden family members. The evidence came from thousands of bank records, Comer said, which Democrats had sat on until Republicans won control of the House.
Despite admitting Joe Biden was involved, Goldman has now challenged Comer to release the complete transcript of Archer’s testimony, saying it will show that Joe Biden had “nothing to do” with his son’s business dealings.
Joe Biden’s 20-plus phone calls with Hunter Biden business associates were the tip of the spear in Archer’s testimony. Some other allegations and claims include:
- Joe Biden had coffee with Jonathan Li, the CEO of BHR, a Chinese capital investment firm. Then-Vice President Biden was comfortable enough with Li to write a college recommendation letter for Li’s daughter.
- In the spring of 2014, Vice President Joe Biden attended a business dinner with Hunter Biden and his associates at Café’ Milano in Washington. Elena Baturina, a wealthy Russian oligarch who is the widow of the former mayor of Moscow, attended the dinner, too. A public sanctions list of prominent Russians does not contain Baturina, who wired $3.5 million to Hunter Biden in 2014 for a consultation agreement.
- Archer confirmed that Hunter Biden would refer to Joe Biden as “my guy.”
