A longtime friend and former business partner of Hunter Biden was sentenced to just over a year in prison Monday for a fraudulent bond scheme aimed at swindling a Native American tribe as a separate federal investigation into President Joe Biden’s son’s taxes and business dealings 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 sentenced at the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse on Monday. Archer was ordered to forfeit more than $15.7 million and join his co-defendants in paying $43.4 million in restitution to the victims.
Archer was convicted in 2018 for securities fraud and conspiracy charges tied to his assistance of con man Jason Galanis in the sale of $60 million in bonds from a development group related to the Oglala Sioux tribe.
The future first son’s name was used in the bond sale to lend it legitimacy, a federal judge wrote, but he was not charged in the fraud case and has denied any involvement in the scheme. Hunter Biden was not charged with any wrongdoing but was listed as a witness.
SECRET SERVICES SAYS IT CAN’T FIND HUNTER BIDEN TRAVEL RECORDS FOR 2010, 2011, OR 2013
Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa released a joint report in 2020, with much of its focus on then-Vice President Biden’s role in helping guide the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy while Hunter Biden held a lucrative position on the board of Burisma. The Republicans said this “created an immediate potential conflict of interest.”
“On April 16, 2014, Vice President Biden met with his son’s business partner, Devon Archer, at the White House. Five days later, Vice President Biden visited Ukraine, and he soon after was described in the press as the ‘public face of the administration’s handling of Ukraine.’ The day after his visit, on April 22, Archer joined the board of Burisma,” Grassley and Johnson wrote. “Six days later, on April 28, British officials seized $23 million from the London bank accounts of Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. Fourteen days later, on May 12, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, and over the course of the next several years, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were paid millions of dollars from a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch for their participation on the board.”
The report says, “In addition to the over $4 million paid by Burisma for Hunter Biden’s and Archer’s board memberships, Hunter Biden, his family, and Archer received millions of dollars from foreign nationals with questionable backgrounds,” including in Russia and China.
Archer expressed some remorse for his criminal securities fraud scheme in court Monday.
“I was doing too many things at once and not paying enough attention,” Archer said, according to the New York Post. “I have deep remorse for the victims of the crime.”
Archer’s attorneys argued earlier this month that “a non-custodial sentence” was fair and that their client shouldn’t spend any time behind bars.
“Devon Archer is a good and trustworthy man,” Archer’s attorneys wrote, adding, “Almost to a fault, he sees the good in people, including those who later abused that trust. … Mr. Archer thought he was building a business, not helping to further Galanis’s criminal scheme.”
The Justice Department argued that Archer should be sentenced to 30 months 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, adding, “When he became involved in this scheme, Archer knew about Jason Galanis’s regulatory bar from serving as an officer or director of a public company, and knew about Galanis’s checkered past. Nonetheless, Archer became a key player in the scheme.”
The 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 attorney, Matthew Schwartz, told the Washington Examiner, “Mr. Archer is obviously disappointed with today’s sentence and intends to appeal.” The Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Archer in November.
Republicans have long sought access to travel records on the president’s son and his taxpayer-funded travel while he allegedly conducted private business during Biden’s vice presidency under former President Barack Obama. They have specifically zeroed in on communications between the Secret Service, Hunter Biden, and his business associates, including Archer.
The Secret Service is telling Republican investigators that it cannot find communications related to Hunter Biden’s travels for 2010, 2011, or 2013.
Emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop previously reported by the Washington Examiner show that Hunter Biden scheduled a meeting in 2014 with Karim Massimov, then the prime minister of Kazakhstan, to discuss an energy deal with Burisma. Hunter Biden said he planned to ditch his Secret Service security detail before departing from Paris to Kazakhstan to discuss the deal.
The laptop emails between Biden, Archer, and Ukrainian Burisma official Vadym Pozharskyi show their desire to work out a deal with Massimov.
Archer sent a message to Biden and Pozharskyi laying out his plans for the trip to Kazakhstan in late May 2014, including a birthday celebration in one Kazakh city and then a meeting with Massimov in Kazakhstan’s capital. Archer said this would be followed by a potential business trip to China’s capital to meet with members of the massive state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation.
Burisma was a subject that former President Donald Trump raised during his controversial 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which led to Trump’s first impeachment in the Democratic-controlled House and an acquittal in the GOP-led Senate. Russia is currently engaged in a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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In his memoir Beautiful Things, Hunter Biden wrote that in 2013, then-Vice President Biden 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 said he tagged along. Hunter Biden 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.”
Last month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki continued to refuse to answer basic questions about Hunter Biden’s role in a Chinese government-linked firm that has invested in companies sanctioned by the United States despite a lawyer for the president’s son saying he no longer holds his 10% ownership stake.
