Originally published August 1, 2023 6:00 pm PDT
“Establish US banking relationship was the goal [Russian oligarch Elena Baturina] gave me,” Biden business associate Devon Archer said to another business partner.
QUICK FACTS:
- Hunter Biden’s business partner, Devon Archer, told the House Oversight Committee that then-Vice President Joe Biden had dinner with his son Hunter Biden and a Russian oligarch named Elena Baturina.
- According to Archer, the VP had contact with his son’s business associates “more than 20 times.”
- Baturina is the widow of Yuri Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow, Russia.
- In 2014, Baturina wired Hunter Biden’s firm Rosemont Seneca $3.5 million.
- The following year, Baturina allegedly sent 11 wires of $391,968.21 to BAK USA LLC, a computer technology startup in New York.
- Nine of Baturina’s wires worth $241, 797.14 were sent through Rosemont Seneca accounts.
JAMES COMER RESPONDS TO ARCHER’S TESTIMONY:
- “Devon Archer’s testimony today confirms Joe Biden lied to the American people when he said he had no knowledge about his son’s business dealings and was not involved. Joe Biden was ‘the brand’ that his son sold around the world to enrich the Biden family,” a report from House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) reads.
- “When Joe Biden was Vice President of the United States, he joined Hunter Biden’s dinners with his foreign business associates in person or by speakerphone over 20 times,” the report continues.
- The report included a section of highlights from Archer’s testimony, one of which described “Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, and Vadym Pozharski, an executive of Burisma” placing “constant pressure on Hunter Biden to get help from D.C. regarding the Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.”
- “Shokin was investigating Burisma for corruption. Hunter Biden, along with Zlochevsky and Pozharski, ‘called D.C.’ to discuss the matter. Biden, Zlochevsky, and Pozharski stepped away to make the call,” according to the report.
- Comer explained, “This raises concerns that Hunter Biden was in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”
- The report added, “Archer acknowledged that then-Vice President Biden had coffee with Jonathan Li, the CEO of BHR, in Beijing. Then-Vice President Biden even wrote a letter of recommendation for college for Li’s daughter.”
BACKGROUND:
- Representative Dan Goldman (D-NY) said the conversations between Biden and Hunter’s business associates consisted primarily of “casual conversation, niceties, the weather, what’s going on.”
- Goldman added that Hunter Biden “would often put his father, occasionally would put his father on to say hello to whomever he happened to be caught at dinner with.”
- The distinction is crucial as both the President and the White House have repeatedly stated that Joe Biden never had any discussions about his son’s business engagements.
