WASHINGTON — First son Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer told lawmakers this week that Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings brought the political scion onto its board so that “people would be intimidated to mess with them … legally.”
According to a transcript of a four-hour deposition released Thursday by the House Oversight Committee, Archer also revealed that then-Vice President Joe Biden met twice with his son’s shady post-Soviet business partners at DC’s Café Milano, not once as previously reported.
These and other revelations blow new holes in President Biden’s claim that he never discussed business with his now-53-year-old son — as House Republicans move closer to launching an impeachment inquiry.
The transcript also confirms that Archer extensively discussed the value Hunter brought to Burisma as part of the Biden family “brand.” Under questioning from Democratic lawyers, Archer mused that “I think Burisma would have gone out of business if it didn’t have the brand attached to it.”
“I think that’s why it was able to survive as long as it did,” he added under interrogation from Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY).
“Well, I don’t understand. How does that have an impact?” Goldman asked.
“Well, the capabilities to navigate D.C. that they were able to, you know, basically be in the news cycle. And I think that preserved them from a, you know, from a longevity standpoint,” Archer filibustered.
“But how would that work?” the Democrat pressed.
“Because people would be intimidated to mess with them,” responded Archer, clarifying “legally” when Goldman asked “in what way” they would be intimidated.
Archer also told the House Oversight Committee that most of $3.5 million wired in February 2014 by former first lady of Moscow Yelena Baturina — who attended one of those dinners with then-VP Biden and his son — was in turn transferred to a firm co-owned by Archer and Hunter Biden, after its initial receipt by an entity that Biden defenders had insisted was solely controlled by Archer.
The witness also revealed that Joe Biden, again while vice president, “had coffee” with Jonathan Li, the incoming CEO of Chinese state-backed investment fund BHR Partners — rather than a mere handshake greeting in Beijing in 2013, as initially reported — and that Hunter, who held a 10% stake in BHR until at least 2021, later put his dad on speaker phone with Li as well.
Only one of the oligarch gatherings at Café Milano, an upscale restaurant west of the White House in Georgetown, was previously known. The April 16, 2015, sitdown formed the basis of The Post’s initial October 2020 reporting that documents retrieved from Hunter’s abandoned laptop implicated his father in influence-peddling.
The Biden campaign insisted at the time that the was not on Biden’s “official schedules.”
Archer testified that unbeknownst to the public there were actually two dinners at the same DC restaurant featuring the sitting vice president and collections of his son’s Eastern European patrons, with one dinner held in spring 2014, followed by the better-known April 2015 meal.
“I believe the first one was, like, a birthday dinner, and then the second was — I think we were supposed to talk about the World Food Program. So there was some talk about that,” Archer said during questioning.
The first dinner included, in addition to Joe and Hunter Biden, Baturina, Kazakhstani businessman Kenes Rakishev — who wired $142,300 used on a luxury car for Hunter Biden — and former Kazakhstani Prime Minister Karim Massimov, Archer said, noting that he could not recall if former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who left office in 2010, joined.
“[Joe Biden] entered the room and shook everybody’s hand,” Archer recalled.
“I don’t remember the conversation. I just remember that he was — he came to dinner, and we ate and kind of talked about the world, I guess, and the weather, and then everybody — everybody left,” he said.
“As far as — I know you’re probably going to ask, you know, how much time. I don’t — it wasn’t 5 minutes; it wasn’t 3 hours.”
The second meal featured a different lineup including Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi, “Hunter, Joe, myself, Karim Massimov, a Greek Orthodox priest, maybe someone from World Food Program,” as Archer put it.
Although Archer didn’t name Baturina as an attendee, her invitation was discussed among the partners and a different attendee of the dinner told The Post earlier this year he saw her and Luzhkov at the event.
At the second Café Milano event, “[Joe Biden] had dinner. He had dinner,” Archer recalled.
When quizzed by Goldman, the former associate said that Joe Biden’s role at the second meal was not a brief stop-in, as characterized in 2021 by a Washington Post article.
“The Washington Post reporting was that President Biden only spoke to his longtime friend, Father Alex Karloutsos, a prominent member of the Greek Orthodox Church, at that dinner. Does that coincide with your memory?” Goldman asked.
“No,” Archer replied, saying it was actually “a regular dinner” and “that’s not correct reporting.” (The attendee who spoke to The Post says Joe Biden was present for about 40 minutes and ate a meal with the group before posing for a photo with two of the Kazakhstani guests.)
Baturina and another Russian billionaire with whom Hunter partnered on US real estate shopping, former military contractor Vladimir Yevtushenkov, remain unsanctioned by President Biden, who has imposed stiff sanctions on Moscow’s business elite in resposne to last year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“There was no business-deals specifics discussed ever at any of these things, but it was — it was a nice, you know, conversation,” said Archer, who said in an interview with Tucker Carlson that was published Wednesday that Hunter sold his ability to navigate the “regulatory environment” in Washington, which in practice means “selling access, at the end of the day.”
Joe Biden dismissed reporting on documents from his son’s laptop as a “Russian plant” during the final 2020 presidential debate, which occurred after The Post’s second exclusive from the laptop showed Joe Biden, described as the “big guy,” was penciled in for a 10% cut in a later Chinese venture involving his son and brother James Biden. A different Hunter Biden partner, Tony Bobulinski, corroborated details of the CEFC dealings, through which the Biden family earned roughly $5 million in 2017 and 2018.
Archer ultimately did not provide significant new information on a bombshell FBI informant file released in full last month after mounting controversy in which a paid informant said that Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky in 2016 said he paid $5 million apiece in bribes to Hunter and Joe Biden in exchange for the elder Biden pushing to oust Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin.
But Archer offered a counter-theory that Zlochevsky considered the bribe to be the approximate amount he had paid Hunter Biden and himself for their service with Burisma.
“I would assume he’s probabl[y] talking about me and Hunter, but I don’t know,” Archer initially said before suggesting later in the interview that Zlochevsky was “sending a signal.”
“In Ukraine, in Russia,” he said, “they brag about how much — they brag about bigger bribes than they actually give.”
Source link: https://nypost.com/2023/08/03/devon-archer-burisma-hired-hunter-biden-so-people-would-be-intimidated-to-mess-with-them/