As the preferred yet dubious Biden-World narrative that the president was "never" aware of or involved in first kid Hunter Biden's businesses continues to crumble, Miranda Devine published another exclusive bombshell at The New York Post on Monday morning: Joe Biden was, as vice president, in direct communication with Hunter's business partners and associates "as many as two dozen times."
According to Devine, Hunter Biden would "dial in his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, on speakerphone into meetings with his overseas business partners," a new piece to the Biden family's influence peddling operation is set to be revealed by Devon Archer — Hunter's "former best friend" — this week in testimony to the House Oversight Committee expected to occur this week.
Archer, notably, has nothing to lose at this point from revealing more about how Hunter and the "Big Guy" did business. As Devine reminds in her Post column, the formerly close-to-the-Biden's Archer "is facing jail for his role in a $60 million bond fraud" case.
Hunter's former BFF is expected to share his first-hand knowledge of such calls that he witnessed including then-VP Biden and his son's business partners, "either in person or via speakerphone when Hunter would call his father and introduce him to foreign business partners or prospective investors."
One example ties in directly with the ongoing probe of information contained in an unclassified FBI-generated FD-1023 form documenting disclosures from a trusted confidential human source about an alleged criminal bribery scheme involving then VP-Joe Biden.
From Devine:
One such meeting was in Dubai late in the evening of Friday, Dec. 4, 2015, after a board meeting of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which was paying Hunter $83,000 a month as a director.
Archer, who also was a director, is expected to testify that, after dinner with the Burisma board at the Burj Al Arab Hotel, he and Hunter traveled six miles north to the Four Seasons Resort Dubai at Jumeirah Beach to have a drink with one of Hunter’s friends.
While they were sitting outside at the bar, Vadym Pozharskyi, a senior Burisma executive, phoned to ask where they were because Burisma’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky needed to speak to Hunter urgently.
Soon afterward, the two Ukrainians joined Hunter and Archer at the Four Seasons bar and Pozharskyi asked Hunter: “Can you ring your dad?” At the time it was early afternoon, Friday, in Washington, DC.
Hunter then called his father, put him on speaker, placed the phone on the table, and introduced the Ukrainians to Joe Biden by name as “Nikolai and Vadym.”
He also said words to the effect that the Burisma bigwigs “need our support.”
VP Biden greeted the Ukrainians but spoke only in vague pleasantries during the short call, and in other such interactions with Hunter’s overseas business partners, Archer is expected to testify.
Congressional investigators are expected to probe the reasons for Zlochevsky requesting the urgent phone call with Joe Biden.
They will note the context, that three days after the speakerphone call, the then-vice president, who was the Obama administration’s point man for Ukraine, was due to fly to Kyiv to address the Ukrainian parliament, known as the “Rada,” on Dec. 9, 2015, about the “poison of cronyism, corruption, and kleptocracy.”
Ten weeks before the call, on Sept. 24, 2015, US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt had given a speech about corruption in Odessa, in which he targeted Zlochevsky by name.
By then, Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin was investigating Burisma for corruption and, within two months, on Feb. 2, 2016, would seize four houses in Kyiv, two plots of land and a Rolls Royce belonging to Zlochevsky, who was living in exile in Dubai.
A month later, Shokin was fired, after Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in US aid to Ukraine.
So Biden really "never" discussed Hunter's businesses? According to what Archer is expected to say under oath to the Oversight Committee this week, that's just not the case and not even close to the truth.
The problem with absolutes, as President Biden and those responsible for managing him and his administration are now learning is that they may seem easy to employ to quickly and supposedly definitively brush off questions of impropriety, but they implode with just one contrary example.
According to Archer's testimony, Hunter would get his dad on the phone — the sitting Vice President of the United States — to chat with those he was already in business with or seeking to land as partners. To, per Archer's claims, see Joe Biden as anything other than a closer to show that Hunter had access to power at the top levels of the U.S. government would be naïve. What better way for a dubiously competent Hunter Biden to convince skittish foreign businessmen that he was worth the money than by landing a direct line to the second most powerful man in the world?
Time will tell how much coverage Archer's testimony gets in mainstream outlets which showed a willful ignorance of last week's revelations revealed when Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) published the full FD-1023 form outlining the allegations of then-VP Biden's criminal bribery scheme. Waiting hours, and in some cases more than a day, to report on the document showed that the mainstream press has not completely abandoned Biden. Still, there's growing talk that Biden could be jettisoned — by choice or by coercion — from the 2024 ticket in favor of someone whose policies are just as bad but is not quite so tied up in allegations of foreign bribery.
Column’s up: Hunter Biden put then-VP dad Joe on the phone with business associates at least 2 dozen times, ex-partner Devon Archer to testify https://t.co/EK84zFXYpo
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) July 24, 2023