WASHINGTON — Hunter Biden’s business associate, Devon Archer, testified before the House Oversight Committee that he has no knowledge that then-Vice President Joe Biden changed U.S. foreign policy to help his son and that he’s not aware of any wrongdoing by the elder Biden, according to transcripts of his testimony released Thursday.
“I have no basis to know if he altered policy to benefit his son. … I have no knowledge,” Archer testified in the closed-door hearing earlier this week.
One of the GOP’s key witnesses in its investigation into the Bidens, Archer told lawmakers that Hunter Biden repeatedly used the Joe Biden “brand” to protect Burisma “so people wouldn’t mess with them” legally and politically. But he also said that he did not disagree with the conclusion that Hunter Biden’s role on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Bursma had no effect on U.S. foreign policy. And Archer testified that he had no knowledge of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden as it related to his son’s business dealings.
“No, I’m not aware of any,” Archer said.
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The witness also described multiple phone calls in which Hunter Biden would put his father on speakerphone in the presence of business associates, but he said that the brief conversations focused on pleasantries like the weather or fishing, not official business.
But Archer testified that those mundane phone calls were meant to convey access and power. Without Hunter Biden, Burisma might not have survived, Archer said.
“I think Burisma would have gone out of business if it didn’t have the brand attached to it. That’s my, like, only honest opinion,” Archer said.
The witness also described two dinners — a birthday dinner and another on the World Food Programme — attended by Hunter and Joe Biden in 2014 and 2015 at Washington’s Cafe Milano. Some foreign business executives and politicians were present, but Archer said Joe Biden didn’t discuss business.
Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., released Archer’s 141-page transcript on the same day former President Donald Trump is set to be arraigned at a federal courthouse in Washington for charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The testimony hands Republicans descriptive details about Hunter Biden and more ammunition as they accuse the Justice Department of aggressively prosecuting Trump for multiple crimes while going easy on Hunter Biden on federal tax and other charges.
But the transcripts appear to back up Democrats, including Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., who have argued that Comer’s investigation into the Bidens has revealed no direct evidence that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s business dealings, was influenced by them or broke the law.
“Once again, Committee Republicans’ priority investigation into President Biden has failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden. On Monday, Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business associate, confirmed in a transcribed interview that President Biden was never involved in Hunter’s business dealings, never profited from such dealings, and never took official action in relation to these business dealings,” Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, said in a statement.
“The transcript released today shows the extent to which Congressional Republicans are willing to distort, twist, and manipulate the facts presented by their own witness just to keep fueling the far-right media’s obsession with fabricating wrongdoing by President Biden in a desperate effort to distract from Donald Trump’s third indictment and the overwhelming evidence of his persistent efforts to undermine American democracy.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Kyle Stewart, Kate Santaliz and Julie Tsirkin contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
