Devon Archer testified Monday that during a 2015 meeting in Dubai, Burisma officials pressured Hunter Biden to help do something about Ukraine’s prosecutor general. Just days later, his father gave a speech about how corrupt the prosecutor was and threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine unless he was ousted.
Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business associate and fellow Burisma board member, told staff for the House Oversight Committee on Monday in a three-hour transcribed interview that on Dec. 4, 2015, Hunter Biden, Archer, and two Burisma executives — Mykola Zlocevsky and Vadym Pozharskyi — were at the Four Seasons Hotel in Dubai having drinks following a Burisma board meeting, according to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) who sat in on a portion of the testimony, and another source familiar with the testimony.
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Archer continued his testimony by saying that during the drinks, Zlochevsky told Hunter Biden that Burisma needed “help from the United States government” to deal with the pressure the company was under from Viktor Shokin, a prosecutor in Ukraine who was allegedly investigating Burisma, according to Jordan and the source. Archer then stepped away, and Hunter Biden was told to call “D.C.,” but Archer did not testify whether or not “D.C.” was then-Vice President Joe Biden.
But, three days after the phone call on Dec. 7, 2015, Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine. His visit to the country was originally announced by the White House before the Dubai meeting on Nov. 13, 2015.
Joe Biden was originally planning to unveil an extra $1 billion in loan guarantees to help Ukraine’s economy rebuild but changed his mind en route to Kyiv, the Washington Examiner has previously reported. On Dec. 8, he gave a speech about how corrupt Shokin, the country’s general prosecutor, was.
“But I can tell you, you cannot name me a single democracy in the world where the cancer of corruption is prevalent,” Joe Biden told Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada on Dec. 8, 2015. “You cannot name me one. They are thoroughly inconsistent. And it’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption. The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.”
In addition, during this December 2015 trip, Joe Biden threatened the Ukrainian government that the United States would withhold the $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine did not fire Shokin, who was criticized by many in the West for not doing enough to crack down on corruption. The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and other allies had the same objective.
Shokin was removed from office in March 2016.
In January 2018, Joe Biden boasted about getting Shokin fired by threatening that the White House would renege on its commitment to provide aid.
“I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired,” Joe Biden said.
Archer also testified that Hunter Biden took credit for his father’s April 22, 2014, visit to Ukraine, according to another source familiar with the testimony.
During Joe Biden’s April 22 visit to Ukraine, he gave a speech that also touched on rooting out corruption in the country.
“Also, to be very blunt about it, and this is a delicate thing to say to a group of leaders in their house of parliament, but you have to fight the cancer of corruption that is endemic in your system right now,” Joe Biden told the Verkhovna Rada on April 22, 2014.
This speech occurred less than one month before Hunter Biden was appointed to the Burisma board on May 12, 2014.
Hunter Biden taking credit for his father’s visit to Ukraine was also relayed by Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY). But Goldman did not give the date of the visit Hunter Biden took credit for. Goldman used this testimony as an example to show how Hunter Biden tried to take credit for things that he had no hand in.
According to Goldman, Archer testified that Hunter Biden often “tried to get credit for things that Mr. Archer testified Hunter had nothing to do with” and would give “the illusion of access to his father.”
“When Vice President Biden went to Ukraine on his own, Hunter said, ‘Well, let’s tell them that I have no idea what is going to happen, but I can take credit for the fact that he is going.’ He was not involved in any of that at all, but he was trying to get credit with Burisma on behalf of actions that his father took that were completely unrelated,” Goldman said.
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The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
“We are aware that all sides are claiming victory following Mr. Archer’s voluntary interview today,” Matthew L. Schwartz, managing partner of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP and counsel to Archer, said in a statement. “But all Devon Archer did was exactly what we said he would: show up and answer the questions put to him honestly and completely. Mr. Archer shared the truth with the Committee, and we will leave to them and others to decide what to do with it.”
