Hunter Biden’s longtime friend and former business partner Devon Archer testified to congressional lawmakers Monday that “Burisma Holdings pressured Hunter in December 2015 to deal with a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the firm for corruption shortly before the then-vice president took steps to force the prosecutor’s firing,” a source “directly familiar” with Archer’s transcribed interview told Just the News.
Archer told the House Oversight and Accountability Committee that “Hunter Biden was added to Burisma’s board in 2014 because his family’s ‘brand’ brought value at a time when the firm was facing corruption allegations from the United States, Great Britain and Ukraine’s own prosecutor general office,” according to the anonymous source, who spoke with JTN while Archer’s interview was still ongoing Monday afternoon.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told reporters Monday the House Oversight Committee’s hearing with Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s longtime friend and fellow Burisma board member, was “very productive,” according to Fox News.
As many pundits following the Hunter Biden investigation suspected, Archer also confirmed that now-President Biden was lying when he said he never met with or discussed his son’s foreign business associates, “telling the committee America’s current president got on speakerphone more than 20 times with his son’s business clients.”
JTN, relying on the source, reports that “Archer testified that Joe Biden did not engage in business specific on such calls, instead he “was put on the phone to sell ‘the brand.’”
Predictably, House Democrats sought to downplay the revelations: New York Rep. Dan Goldman said recounting Archer’s testimony, “He approximated that about 20 times over the course of his 10-year business relationship that he had with Hunter Biden, which would be about twice a year, that Hunter would put his father on speakerphone with whomever was at dinner — and there was no indication that he had any idea who was at dinner with them.”
During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden said he never even spoke with Hunter about his business.
Just the News reports that Archer, the “former business partner at the Rosemont Seneca firm who was convicted in 2018 in a tribal bond fraud scheme, also told lawmakers that Hunter Biden was pressured in late 2015 to help deal with Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin’s corruption investigation as Joe Biden was preparing to travel to Ukraine.”
“In December 2015, Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, and Vadym Pozharski, an executive of Burisma, placed constant pressure on Hunter Biden to get help from D.C. regarding the Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin,” the source explained to JTN, recounting Archer’s testimony. “Shokin was investigating Burisma for corruption. Hunter Biden, along with Zlochevsky and Pozharski, ‘called D.C.’ to discuss the matter. Biden, Zlochevsky, and Pozharski stepped away to make the call.”
Later, Joe Biden infamously boasted about his role in firing Shokin as prosecutor, as JTN reports: “A few days after that meeting, Joe Biden visited Ukraine as vice president and began an effort to force Ukraine’s president to fire Shokin, eventually threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if the termination did not happen. Biden’s defenders have long maintained the firing was not related to Burisma and was a result of U.S. policy because the Obama administration felt Shokin was corrupt.”
Fox News also reports that Hunter Biden told Archer that they would get the “last laugh” after Archer told him that a judge had thrown out his conviction, according to 2018 text messages reviewed by news network’s digital branch.
