Hunter Biden’s ex-business partner calls on appeals court to let him off the hook
Jerry Dunleavy
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A longtime friend and former business partner of Hunter Biden tried to convince an appeals court to help toss his fraud conviction on Tuesday as a separate federal investigation into the taxes and business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son continues.
Devon Archer, who worked with Hunter Biden for the Rosemont Seneca Partners investment firm prior to both men joining the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma in 2014, was convicted in 2018 in connection with a fraudulent bond scheme aimed at swindling a Native American tribe, and he was sentenced to one year and one day in prison in February 2022.
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Archer, who was also ordered by a Manhattan federal judge last year to forfeit more than $15.7 million and to join his co-defendants in paying $43.4 million in restitution to the victims of the fraud, appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, and a trio of circuit judges heard his argument Tuesday morning.
Judge Richard Sullivan, who was appointed to the appeals court by former President Donald Trump in 2018, and Judge Myrna Perez, who was appointed to the court by Joe Biden in 2021, heard the appeal in person from Archer’s lawyer Matthew Schwartz, while Judge William Nardini, who was appointed by Trump in 2019, listened in remotely.
Samuel Rothschild, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, told the three judges that the lower court’s decision should be upheld. The 2022 ruling, which was far less than what prosecutors wanted, came from Manhattan Judge Ronnie Abrams, who reportedly said the crime was “too serious” to allow Archer to dodge prison, arguing that “there’s no dispute about the harm caused to real people.”
Archer’s lawyer Schwartz tried to argue Tuesday that Abrams had “misapprehended her role” as a judge when she held Archer responsible for the effects of the fraud, including producing massive losses and harming victims. Sullivan replied that “it’s not clear to me” that the district judge had misused her role “at all.”
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Schwartz contended that Archer did not have “complete knowledge” of the fraud and said the judge should not have found that his client had “particular knowledge” of losses or the number of fraud victims.
Rothschild argued that the appeals court “should affirm the judgment” by the lower court, arguing that the jury rightly found Archer guilty of fraud and that the judge rightly held Archer responsible for the impact of the fraud.
Archer’s lawyer also said he had only realized Monday night that Abrams had allegedly made a math error in overcalculating the sentencing guidelines, contending “it was a simple counting error” but that “it does infect the analysis” the judge used for sentencing.
Nardini asked if Schwartz had brought this problem up in any of his briefs to the court, and Archer’s lawyer said he had not. Rothschild said that “the government is looking into the facts” raised by Schwartz and pointed out the judge had sentenced Archer to something significantly lower than she could have.
Schwartz also argued that the warrant the Justice Department used to gather evidence against Archer “authorized a search for any kind of crime” and called the warrant “overbroad.” He called for the warrant to be tossed and argued that “if the warrant falls … it knocks out significant portions of the evidence against Mr. Archer.”
Sullivan asked the federal prosecutor why the warrant referenced “other crimes” instead of being specific.
Rothschild defended the warrant, saying the wording “was clearly geared” toward the specific fraud scheme and said the government didn’t try to use the warrant to pursue other crimes.
“We will reserve a decision,” Sullivan said at the end of the hearing, leaving it open-ended in terms of how the three-judge panel would rule.
Archer’s bid to stay out of prison comes as the Justice Department weighs indicting Hunter Biden and as Republicans in the House and Senate have ramped up their investigations into the president’s son, with GOP investigators often seeking records from or tied to Archer.
Republicans have long contended Hunter Biden’s lucrative business dealings in Ukraine and China indicate he may have committed crimes related to foreign lobbying or money laundering, although multiple recent reports have indicated U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a Trump-appointed holdover and the Delaware prosecutor overseeing the case, may have narrowed his focus to Hunter Biden potentially committing tax fraud and lying on a federal gun form when purchasing a revolver.
The Justice Department argued last year that Archer should be sentenced to nearly three years in prison.
”Archer knowingly participated in numerous aspects of a scheme to defraud the Wakpamni Lake Community Corporation of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, into issuing more than $60 million in bonds, the proceeds of which the defendants used not for a promised annuity, but instead for their own personal use and to help build a financial services mega-company they would control,” prosecutors wrote.
Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released a joint report in 2020, with much of its focus on then-Vice President Joe Biden’s role in helping guide the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy while Hunter Biden held a lucrative position on the board of Burisma. Archer figured prominently in the report.
Johnson and Grassley also accused Secretary of State Antony Blinken of “false testimony” this month and are demanding records from him after it was revealed he may have lied under oath when he denied exchanging emails with Hunter Biden. Archer figured in that controversy as well.
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Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has also focused on Hunter Biden’s dealings with Archer.
In his memoir Beautiful Things, Hunter Biden wrote that in 2013, his father, then vice president, asked his son’s teenage daughter to join him on Air Force Two to Japan and then to Beijing, where he was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Hunter Biden said he tagged along and wrote that “while we were in Beijing, Dad met one of Devon’s Chinese partners, Jonathan Li, in the lobby of the American delegation’s hotel, just long enough to say hello and shake hands.”