Hunter Biden on GOP witness Devon Archer: ‘Self-made, supermotivated,’ with ‘disarming charm’
Tiana Lowe Doescher
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Joe Biden’s Justice Department is currently racing to jail former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer before he testifies in front of the House Oversight Committee about the president’s alleged complicity in his son’s overseas business activities. But before Democrats try to discredit Archer, they ought to listen to the ringing endorsements of the private equity manager — namely, the extensive praise from Hunter himself.
In his memoir Beautiful Things, Hunter praised Archer as a “self-made, supermotivated former college lacrosse player with a disarming charm who’d flown all over the world to raise money for his real estate investment firm.”
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Hunter Biden, who blamed Barack Obama’s campaign for being “vehemently opposed” to his international lobbying, joined Archer and Christopher Heinz — yes, John Kerry’s stepson and heir to the billion-dollar ketchup fortune — to found Rosemont Seneca Partners, a private equity fund, in 2010. Three years after that, Hunter wrote “jumped” on Air Force Two to introduce “Dad” to Chinese national Jonathan Li, who founded a Chinese investment fund with Hunter and Archer. A few months later, Archer connected Hunter with Burisma Holdings.
“[Burisma boss Mykola] Zlochevsky was concerned with protecting his company from Putin’s advances,” Hunter claimed. “Toward that end, Zlochevsky wanted to lure more U.S. and European investors, both as a way to grow his business and as a show of solidarity with the West. He saw that solidarity as a bulwark against Russia’s aggression. To enhance those ties, he wanted to ensure that Burisma’s business practices adhered to Western standards of corporate governance and transparency.”
Archer succeeded in recruiting Hunter to join the board of Burisma for a five-figure paycheck — but Heinz rejected an offer, later claiming that the “lack of judgment” by Hunter and Archer “was a major catalyst for Mr. Heinz ending his business relationships” with the two. According to the memoir of Hunter’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, when Hunter joined the Burisma board in the spring of 2014, he was also in the throes of another relapse from his rampant addictions. (And within months, Buhle would insist she first discovered Hunter’s overseas adultery.)
Hunter has repeatedly asserted that he did not display a lack of judgment of ethics for joining Burisma, though he did say, “its robust compensation…played to the worst aspects of my addictive impulses.”
Archer departed the Ukrainian company in 2018. Hunter stayed until April 2019, the same month his father announced his third bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
So why are Democrats trying to lock up Archer before his scheduled testimony on Monday? They may say it’s because Archer was sentenced to a year and a day in prison by the Southern District of New York for fraud charges related to another business scheme by the Burnham Financial Group. While Hunter swears he wasn’t a part of this scheme, emails from the infamous laptop prove that Hunter was intimately doing business with Burnham, and court documents showed that Burnham once claimed Biden was the firm’s vice chairman to investors.
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Archer served as an adviser to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign and co-chaired his national finance committee. Evidently, he isn’t standing down and will give testimony that he insists the president has lied when claiming to know nothing about his son’s business dealings.
“We are aware of speculation that the Department of Justice’s weekend request to have Mr. Archer report to prison is an attempt by the Biden administration to intimidate him in advance of his meeting with the House Oversight Committee,” Archer’s lawyer told Politico. “To be clear, Mr. Archer does not agree with that speculation. In any case, Mr. Archer will do what he has planned to do all along, which is to show up on Monday and to honestly answer the questions that are put to him by the Congressional investigators.”