Key Hunter Biden witness poised to testify, but still lacks access to critical cache of evidence

In his hey-day as a Democratic trailblazer a decade ago, Devon Archer worked alongside Hunter Biden in the pursuit of global deals, including inside China and Ukraine’s Burisma Holdings energy firm.

He golfed with Joe Biden, rubbed elbows with John Kerry and stood at the intersection of Washington power brokers and foreign oligarchs seeking to curry favor with the future first family.

Today, Archer is weeks away from beginning a prison sentence on a 2018 federal conviction for fleecing investors in a bond deal involving a Native American tribe. He has told friends he hopes to get home confinement from the trial judge, instead of prison, maintaining he was unaware fraud had occurred with the deal.

He's also days away from becoming the most consequential witness to date in the GOP-led House hearings into alleged Biden family corruption. Archer knows how and why Hunter Biden landed on the Burisma board and was courted by oligarchs from Russia to China. He knows what, if any, business partners got access to then-Vice President Joe Biden and what, if any, favors the 46th president may have bestowed on Hunter Biden’s business suitors.

He also knows well the labyrinth of companies through which Hunter Biden moved and took money.

“I am looking forward to hearing from Devon Archer,” said Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., a member of the House Oversight committee. “It takes a lot of courage for him to come forward. He is he was close to that family and to Hunter and Joe.”

Biggs said one of the questions lawmakers wanted to pursue is whether Archer faced any pressure during the years the Biden political machine tried to suppress the allegations.

“I'll tell you what else. I have no doubt that these these folks have tried to put pressure and threatened him as well,” Biggs said. “And I look forward to hearing what Devon Archer has to say.”

Archer is slated to tell the House Oversight and Accountability Committee what he knows during a transcribed interview the week of July 24.

But just days away from that crucial appearance, he lacks access to a critical cache of evidence: tens of thousands of pages of emails, memos, documents and text messages the FBI seized from him and his businesses around the time of his arrest in spring 2016.

Like most legal defense teams in major criminal cases, Archer’s lawyers had the vast tranche of documents the FBI returned to them during trial discovery and digitized memos so they could be quickly searched in trial preparation.

However, the New York firm that did that work still has the documents.

Archer was overdue on paying some of the bills for the storage but months ago made the payments and removed any liens, court records show. But the firm has yet to provide a digital copy of the document collection, according to memos reviewed by Just the News and interviews.

Efforts to secure the documents were continuing this week without an immediate resolution, the memos show, raising the possibility that Congress may need to subpoena the records for the evidence to be available in time for his transcribed interview.

“The cache of documents freezes in time all of the essential communications that Devon was part of, including documents and evidence that weren’t recovered from the Hunter Biden laptop,” a person briefed on the matter told Just the News.

Congressional investigators hope the tranche of documents includes a December 2015 memo from a Democrat firm called Blue Star Strategies that outlines a strategy for helping Burisma after the firm’s members met with Joe Biden’s staff as well as contemporaneous documents about Archer and Hunter Biden’s dealings with Chinese investors for Rosemont Bohai Harvest, details about Burisma board meetings and the efforts to woo a Russian oligarch named Yelena Baturina.

Just the News confirmed that one of the documents the FBI seized during the Archer probe was from a company that Archer was courting to buy, and it lays out extensive details about firms involving Archer and Hunter Biden that were involved with China and other foreign interests.

One of the claims in that memo was that Baturina, the oligarch and wife of Moscow’s former mayor, had invested as much as $200 million in projects inside the business empire that included Archer, Hunter Biden and other business partners. A source close to Archer said the actual amount was closer to $120 million.

“Mr. Archer further discussed the possible sale of his company and the revenues that might be realized, which he said would be a big liquidity event for him, as well as his connections with Bohai, which he said was sponsored by major banks and institutional investors in China,” the memo stated. “He also discussed his client relationship with Yelena Baturina, who he said had invested over $200 million dollars in his various investment funds."

You can read that document here: