The Department of Justice has denied that its letter to a federal judge on Saturday was seeking the surrender of Hunter Biden’s former business associate on charges unrelated to the scandals of the president’s son ahead of his scheduled testimony before a House committee.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York sent a letter to judge Ronnie Abrams, asking her to schedule a date for Devon Archer, a longtime Hunter Biden business partner, to report to prison. A few days earlier, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed that Archer would serve a one-year sentence in a case of fraud, which he was convicted of in 2018.
Archer is slated to testify to the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Republican representative James Comer, on Monday about his business dealings with Hunter Biden. The committee subpoenaed him in June. He is expected to shed light on the extent of President Biden’s alleged involvement with Hunter’s business engagements when Joe Biden was vice president, between 2009 and 2017.
Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams has since written in a letter to Abrams: “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.
An attorney for Archer, Matthew Schwartz, also dismissed speculation that the DOJ sought to imprison Archer ahead of his planned testimony.
“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 to Politico on 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.”
Starting in 2014, Archer worked with Hunter Biden on the board of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings. The pair also co-founded the investment firm Rosemont Seneca together, where Archer was managing director.
Last week, the plea deal that Hunter Biden negotiated with the government derailed after a judge raised questions about the terms of the agreement. Republican critics had criticized the agreement as too lenient, alleging that the DOJ prosecutors in the case were essentially in cahoots with Hunter Biden’s defense team. The prosecution never filed an indictment against the president’s son.
Last Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika asked for clarification about two deals — a plea agreement concerning Hunter’s unpaid taxes and a “diversion agreement” concerning his gun-possession charge — that required her adjudication. Noreika asked specifically what immunity Hunter would be granted in exchange for pleading guilty to two minor tax charges. She pointed out that the investigation in which Hunter is a subject and could be charged is ongoing. The agreement, she also noted, may contain at least one constitutionally objectionable term that the court should review before proceeding.