House Oversight Investigation Heats Up With Subpoena of Hunter Biden Friend, Disclosure of New Documents

Congressional Republicans are widening their investigation into the Biden family amid accusations that President Biden received a $5 million bribe while he was vice president at the behest of his troubled son, Hunter. The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Congressman James Comer, is now hoping to speak with one of the younger Mr. Biden’s closest friends and business associates in order to ascertain the scope of the family’s foreign financial ties. A businessman recently convicted of securities fraud who was a business partner of the first son, Devon Archer, has been asked to sit before committee members. In a subpoena sent to Archer’s attorneys on Monday, Mr. Comer asked that their client sit for a deposition on the morning of July 16. As part of their larger investigation into the first son’s foreign business dealings, the committee “has identified Archer as possessing information relevant to its investigation,” according to the subpoena. The document further claims that Archer “played a significant role in the Biden family’s business deals abroad,” including in Ukraine. Mr. Archer is a friend of Secretary Kerry’s stepson, Chris Heinz (son of the late Senator Heinz and heir to the ketchup fortune), from their college days at Yale. He, Mr. Heinz, and Mr. Biden formed a now-defunct investment firm called Rosemont Seneca, which was at the center of the Biden family’s maze of financial dealings now under investigation.The subpoena of Archer comes shortly after a series of emails were disclosed showing him and the younger Mr. Biden discussing strategies for lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian industry here in the United States. Archer and Mr. Biden had extensive discussions about Ukraine while Mr. Biden’s father was serving as vice president and as a point person on Ukrainian affairs for the Obama administration. One email sent to Archer in 2014 that was recovered from Mr. Biden’s infamous laptop — first reported by the New York Post’s Miranda Devine — includes a memo Mr. Biden fils sent to Archer that analyzes the political and economic landscape of Ukraine amid nationwide protests and civil upheaval.The memo, which the younger Mr. Biden referred to as “thoughts after doing some research,” includes 22 bullet points on the 2014 protests, the country’s energy sector, and the political future of the now-besieged Eastern European nation, among other things. In April of that year — the same month that the memo was sent to Archer — Mr. Biden joined the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma Holding, despite having no professional experience in the energy sector. Burisma paid Mr. Biden more than $80,000 a month until his father left the Naval Observatory in 2017, at which point the now-first son’s salary was cut significantly. Another email was sent to Archer just one day after his Ukraine memo in April 2014. In it, Mr. Biden refers to “my guys [sic] upcoming travels” just one week before the then-vice president traveled to Ukraine in an official capacity. Mr. Comer’s strong interest in Mr. Biden’s work with Ukraine comes as he pursues information from the FBI that allegedly details a bribe that was paid to Vice President Biden by a Ukrainian businessman. That Ukrainian, according to the sources who spoke to the Washington Examiner, was the owner of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky. This purported bribe would have come to the vice president while Hunter Biden sat on Burisma’s board in an effort to get more U.S. support for Ukrainian business interests.For more than a month, Mr. Comer and a Senate colleague, Senator Grassley, attempted to gain access to the whistleblower form — known as an FD-1023 — that details the alleged bribe. After reviewing the document with his Oversight Committee colleagues, Mr. Comer is now claiming there is even more information that the FBI is concealing from Congress. On Monday, in an interview with Fox News’s Trey Gowdy — who once served as the Oversight Committee chairman — Mr. Comer claimed that there were “two footnotes” in the FD-1023 form he reviewed that “references other 1023s.”“Why hasn’t the federal government done anything about it?” Mr. Comer asked his former colleague. The lead Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Congressman Jamie Raskin, claimed after reviewing the FD-1023 alongside Mr. Comer that federal prosecutors investigated the bribery accusation in 2020 and decided it was not worthy of a criminal investigation. Mr. Comer, as well as President Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, have said that is false. “It’s not true,” Mr. Barr told the Federalist of the claim that the investigation was completed. “It wasn’t closed down. On the contrary, it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.” The United States attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, is allegedly investigating the FD-1023 as well as whether Mr. Biden lied about his (now admitted) drug use to buy a gun and if he cheated on his taxes. The probe of Mr. Biden’s firearm purchase and alleged tax avoidance has gone on for four years, and Mr. Weiss has been coming under intense pressure from Republicans in recent weeks to show his hand.As for Archer, he was convicted in 2018 of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and securities fraud for swindling $60 million out of a Native American tribe, a scheme that did not involve the Bidens. Archer recently lost his appeal, and he could soon begin a one-year prison sentence.

House Oversight Investigation Heats Up With Subpoena of Hunter Biden Friend, Disclosure of New Documents

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