‘My guy’: Hunter Biden partner Devon Archer says Joe Biden was on calls with foreign patrons for ‘the brand’

WASHINGTON —Former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer told Congress Monday that Hunter referred to President Biden as “my guy” while connecting his dad to foreign associates nearly two dozen times — as Republicans move closer to starting an impeachment inquiry.

Archer said during a four-hour House Oversight Committee interview that Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings paid Hunter up to $1 million per year to serve on its board because of his family’s “brand.”

Archer met with then-Vice President Joe Biden in April 2014, within days of joining Burisma’s board alongside Hunter, and told lawmakers that “Burisma would have gone out of business if ‘the brand’ had not been attached to it,” according to a readout from panel Republicans.

“Archer talked about the ‘big guy’ and how Hunter Biden always said, ‘We need to talk to my guy,’ ‘We need to see when my guy is going to be here,’ and those types of things,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told reporters as he left the deposition.

According to Archer, Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky —  who allegedly told an FBI informant in 2016 he was “coerced” to pay $10 million in bribes to Hunter and Joe Biden — put intense pressure on Hunter in late 2015 to enlist US support for ousting Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, who had investigated Burisma, the Republican readout said.

At one point, Hunter Biden, Zlochevsky and Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi stepped away and “called DC” about the issue, Archer said.

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“This raises concerns that Hunter Biden was in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” the GOP majority on the Oversight Committee tweeted.

Archer also said Hunter Biden, whose probation-only plea deal for tax fraud linked to his foreign income and an unrelated gun charge collapsed last week, put his father on speakerphone more than 20 times during business meetings to promote “the brand.” 

Joe Biden was on speakerphone during a Paris dinner with reps from a French energy company, Archer said, and while his son was in China with Jonathan Li of BHR Partners, a state-backed investment fund co-founded by Hunter in 2013 — after he introduced his father to Li during an official trip to Beijing.

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Archer further confirmed that then-Vice President Biden attended an April 2015 dinner at Washington’s Cafe Milano with Pozharskyi and former Moscow first lady Yelena Baturina, as previously reported by The Post.

It was not immediately clear whether Archer shared significant details about the bribery accusation involving Burisma or addressed other lingering points of intrigue, such as the extent of the business relationship between Hunter and Baturina, or the ties between the first son and another Russian billionaire, former arms contractor Vladimir Yevtushenkov.

“[Archer] said, ‘I do not recall’ more times than I [would like],” Oversight Committee member Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told The Post Monday evening.

“We wish he could have given us more detailed answers on some of our questions. But what he did provide is massive,” she added. “He provided, as a former business partner of Hunter Biden, that Joe Biden lied to the American people so many times. Joe Biden is on record over and over — on video and interviews — saying, ‘I don’t know anything about my son’s business dealings. I’ve never talked to Hunter about his business.'”

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Archer appeared after the Justice Department and Archer’s own lawyer, Matthew Schwartz, attempted to dismiss “speculation” that federal prosecutors had tried to intimidate Archer ahead of his planned testimony with a Saturday request that a judge begin the process to imprison Archer on an unrelated fraud conviction.

Schwartz is a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner — a law firm with close ties to Democrats that formerly employed Hunter during his father’s vice presidency.

In that capacity, Hunter worked with Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu, who bank records show paid members of the Biden family $1 million between 2015 and 2017 as he battled a corruption conviction — even as then-VP Joe Biden campaigned against corruption in Romania.

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Greene suggested the Boies Schiller link embodied by Schwartz was “probably why [Archer] kept saying, ‘I do not recall. I do not recall. I do not recall.’ That was just … trying to cover up crimes for the Biden family.”

Archer didn’t answer reporter questions as he and Schwartz left an office building near the Capitol — only replying that his watch was a Seiko in response to an off-topic query.

One of the Oversight Committee’s top Democrats, Daniel Goldman of New York, said that Archer provided no information damaging to the president and claimed that Burisma didn’t want Shokin fired as Ukraine’s top prosecutor — an apparent contradiction from what Archer said.

“The witness stated unequivocally that there is no evidence in his possession or his knowledge that Joe Biden ever discussed business with Hunter Biden, Joe Biden ever did anything on behalf of Hunter Biden’s business interests or otherwise never changed official policy in any way shape or form,” Goldman said.

“And in fact, the only evidence that we have is to the contrary, which is that even though it was perceived by Burisma that they had the prosecutor general Shokin ‘under control’, that Joe Biden advocated for his firing, which, of course, was not coveted or desired by Burisma.”

Goldman also contended that Joe Biden’s interactions with his son’s partners were innocent.

“He described what the weather was,” Goldman said of the president’s role in foreign business relationships. “It’s kind of a preposterous premise to think that a father should not say hello to people that the son is at dinner with, and that’s literally all the evidence is.”

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But former FBI official Chris Swecker, who led the bureau’s criminal investigations division from 2004 to 2006, said that things didn’t look good for President Biden, noting the many alleged speakerphone calls.

“As head of the criminal division, we saw this quite a bit in bribery cases, it’s called stream of services,” Swecker told Fox News as Archer left Capitol Hill.

“You sell access or something of value and you get something back in return, but it’s not an express quid pro quo. It’s just an understanding, but if you can match up the services within a reasonable period of time with the thing of benefit — in this case, $10 million, or whatever it is — then you then you have bribery,” Swecker said.

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“They were selling access. All he had to do [was] they do the big setup and then they put Joe Biden on the phone and just this shows that they have access. ‘Here he is, he’s on the phone. I just told you, you know, we can do things for you. And there he is.’ So I mean, that matches up perfectly. Then you match it up with the prosecutor getting fired. The prosecutor is going after Burisma right within that same timeframe. Boy, you’re really close to a slam dunk in my opinion.”

Oversight Committee member Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who was not present at the deposition, told Fox that Biden’s false claims to have never discussed business with his son hint at more substantial potential wrongdoing.

“The president himself, before he was the president and since he’s been elected president, said he had no knowledge of and no dealings with his son’s business, acquaintances or operation apparently, and obviously that’s completely false,” he said. “And that’s a lie and then it makes you wonder what else is being lied about.”

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Perry added: “President Biden is engulfed in a lot of smoke and where there’s smoke, there’s fire and it appears he has lit himself ablaze in an inferno of lies and testimony that points to corruption at the very, very highest level.”

President Biden himself has tried to laugh off the $10 million bribery allegation involving Burisma, telling The Post last month that the account was “malarkey” and asking, “Where’s the money?”

But Oversight Committee Republicans are investigating whether the Biden family kept overseas bank accounts and communications on Hunter’s laptop refer to Burisma opening a Maltese bank account for him in 2016.

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The story behind Baturina’s $3.5 million transfer on Valentine’s Day 2014 to a Hunter Biden-linked firm also has remained murky since it emerged in a 2020 report from GOP-led Senate committees. Biden allies have pointed the finger at Archer, claiming he used a once-shared corporate entity for his own dealings.

Documents from Hunter’s abandoned laptop show he was involved in work with Baturina, as well as Yevtushenkov — neither of whom have been sanctioned by the Biden administration, which has sought to financially squeeze Russia’s elite to end the war in Ukraine — though it remains unclear how much money the first son may have earned through the ventures.

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Laptop records indicate that Hunter met with Yevtushenkov, who until recently controlled large Russian military contractors and Russia’s largest cellphone provider MTS, in 2012 and 2013 — first in New York, then in DC — as he searched for property investments.

An associate of Yevtushenkov told The Post this year, “I asked [Yevtushenkov], ‘Why are you doing this?’ on the front end — before I understood that they were going to buy some real estate.”

“He made it very clear to me that, you know … ‘I think it would be good to have a good relationship with this guy … maybe he can do a favor for us and we can do a favor for him,’” the source said. “It was a complete quid pro quo that he was going in for.”

“I told him that’s not the way it works in America, [but] he basically laughed at me and told me I was so naïve,” the source added.

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At the time, Yevtushenkov’s cellphone firm faced a US investigation of nearly $1 billion in bribes paid to Uzbekistani officials between 2004 and 2012. MTS was listed on the New York Stock Exchange before trading in its shares was suspended last year and ultimately settled the case with the Trump Justice Department in 2019 with an $850 million fine.

The elder Biden has claimed for years that “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealing.”

In recent weeks, the White House adopted the line that the president “was never in business with his son.”

Greene said that she expects House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to launch an impeachment inquiry into Biden later this year — and that confirmation that Biden lied to the public could sway reluctant moderates, as was the case in impeachment inquiries into Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, who also told famous untruths amid scandals.

Greene said that McCarthy made clear to House Republicans last week that they would be expected to vote in unison when a measure to create an impeachment inquiry comes to the floor.

“He pitched it to our GOP conference in our private meeting that we have each week when we’re in session, and he told the entire conference, he said, ‘When I ask you for this, when I come to you, when we’re bringing this to the floor, I expect you to be with me on this vote,'” she said.

McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Greene’s recollection. A second source who was in the room told The Post that McCarthy stressed, “We have a responsibility to investigate.”

Ahead of Archer’s interview, Manhattan federal prosecutors on Saturday asked federal judge Ronnie Abrams to set a date for Archer to start his year-and-a-day sentence for defrauding an American Indian tribe.

Schwartz, Archer’s lawyer, on Sunday denied any connection between the congressional testimony and the request to send his client to prison — as Republicans expressed concern about witness intimidation. 

Archer was convicted in 2018 of securities fraud for swindling the Oglala Sioux Indian tribe as part of a scheme that involved the sale of bonds. Hunter Biden was not charged in connection with that venture.

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Archer’s conviction was overturned later that year — but the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it in 2020 and rejected his appeal earlier this year.

“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,” Schwartz said in a statement Sunday.

“To be clear, Mr. Archer does not agree with that speculation,” he added. “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.”

The Justice Department also denied that its letter, which caused an uproar among House Republicans, was seeking Archer’s surrender “before his Congressional testimony.”

In the letter to Abrams, Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams wrote: “As the Court knows, to surrender and commence his sentence of imprisonment, the defendant first must be designated to a federal facility by the Bureau of Prisons — a process that can take several weeks or months after the Court sets a surrender date.”

“Nonetheless, for the avoidance of all doubt, the Government requests that any surrender date, should the Court order one, be scheduled to occur after the defendant’s Congressional testimony is completed,” Williams added.

Schwartz previously said it was “premature” to have the judge set a date for his client’s incarceration before he considers his appeal options.

He is expected to file a formal response to the prosecutors’ letter by Wednesday.