Did President Biden have anything to do with his son Hunter’s business dealings?
The president has been adamant, for many years, that he has not, and that he did not ever make money from anything his son was doing.
This week, per Fox News, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre answered a question about reported testimony that will say the president sometimes spoke with potential investors in his son’s business ventures.
“Chairman James Comer today says that the Oversight Committee has evidence that the president in the past communicated directly with foreign business associates of his son Hunter Biden many times. Curious if the White House and the president still stand behind his comment that he’s never been involved and has never even spoken to his son about his business?,” Gillian Turner, a Fox News reporter, said in a press briefing.
“So, I’ve been asked this question a million times. The answer is not going to change. The answer remains the same. The president was never in business with his son. I just don’t have anything else to add,” the press secretary answered.
Former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer, per Fox News, will testify before the House Oversight Committee, possibly as soon as this week, and will reportedly claim that President Biden “met with dozens of Hunter’s business associates while he was serving as vice president between 2009 and 2017.” Some meetings took place by telephone and others in person, per Fox’s characterization of the planned testimony.
“We are looking forward very much to hearing from Devon Archer about all the times he has witnessed Joe Biden meeting with Hunter Biden’s overseas business partners when he was vice president, including on speakerphone,” House Oversight Committee said in a statement this week.
Archer, per the Fox report, will testify to a moment in December of 2015, when Hunter Biden met with the owner of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy concern where he was working at the time, as was Archer. Allegedly, a senior Burisma executive asked Hunter Biden to call his father, with Hunter emphasizing that the Burisma executives “need our support.”
Archer will testify that the then-vice president acknowledged them, but that the conversation was “brief.”
The witness is also expected to testify that the now-president was referred to as “The Big Guy.”
The Fox report points to repeated incidents in which Hunter Biden called his father to impress business associates, and introduced his father during tours of the White House. But they do not show the elder Biden proactively involving himself in any of son’s business ventures, or that the president collected any money from any such deal.
Devon Archer, in early 2022, was sentenced to a year and a day in prison, after he was convicted of “ defrauding a Native American tribal entity and various investment advisory clients of tens of millions of dollars in connection with the issuance of bonds by the tribal entity and the subsequent sale of those bonds through fraudulent and deceptive means,” the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York said at the time. Hunter Biden was not involved in that criminal case.
Fox quoted a “close associate” of Archer’s as stating that the witness has “nothing to hide, no revenge to enact nor anyone to protect other than his family and he feels he has been handcuffed by the absurdly bogus [fraud] case into remaining silent.”
The House Oversight Committee has also alleged that both Joe and Hunter Biden were bribed $5 million each by a Burisma executive, and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) last week released the FBI document in which an informant alleged that that bribery scheme took place. But no solid evidence has emerged that the bribes ever actually took place.
Author Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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