Hunter Biden’s close friend and former business partner Devon Archer was sentenced to one year of prison on Monday for his role in a scheme to defraud a Native American tribe of $60 million, according to a report.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Ronnie Abrams also ordered Archer, 47, to forfeit $15,700,513 and pay $43,427,436 in restitution, according to the Daily Mail.
Hunter Biden, 52, reportedly worked closely with Archer’s company, Burnham Financial Group, during the time of the fraud between 2014 and 2016, according to emails obtained by the outlet.
Archer, along with two other Burnham Financial Group executives, was convicted in 2018 of defrauding the Oglala Sioux Indian tribe out of bond proceeds, according to the outlet.
Biden was reportedly not implicated in the fraud but had helped to broker an unrelated venture for Durham Financial Group with Chinese firm Bohai Harvest. His lawyer has said he knew nothing about the fraud.
However, it emerged during the trial that Hunter Biden’s name was used in literature promoting the scheme, the outlet reported.
Biden’s lawyer George Mesires claimed, “As soon as Hunter learned of the illegal conduct, and that his name was being used in this unauthorized and inappropriate manner, Hunter took immediate steps to ensure that his business interests would not be associated with the Burnham Group or with any of the defendants.”
Emails showed that Hunter Biden played a pivotal role in brokering the joint venture between the Chinese firm Bohai Harvest and Burnham.
“Henry [Zhao, a Bohai executive] we believe, is still interested in doing the JV [joint venture] deal if a fair evaluation of Burnham can be agreed to and if YOU as a deal maker are inside Burnham,” one of Archer’s business partners, James Bulger wrote to Hunter in October 2014.
Bulger also asked Hunter Biden to tell Zhao that “you look forward to meeting him” in the U.S. and are “very keen on getting the Harvest/Burnham platform set up.”
Emails between Biden and Archer from July 2014 also showed plans for Burnham to buy Hunter Biden’s financial firm Rosemont Seneca, and showed that Biden reported earnings of $166,666 from Burnham on his 2015 tax return.
Then-former Vice President Joe Biden (second right) and his son Hunter (far left) golfing in the Hamptons with Devon Archer (far right), who served on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings with Hunter. (screenshot/Tucker Carlson Tonight)
Weeks after the Bohai-Burnham deal went through in 2016, federal law enforcement questioned Hunter Biden on it, according to a list of “government questions” his lawyer had sent him, including why he was paid $248,000 in “sporadic and varying amounts” through indirect wires to another company, according to the Daily Mail.
In May, the Security Exchange Commission charged Archer and two other Burnham executives, Jason Galanis and Bevan Cooney, with selling fake bonds.
Galanis’ brother had said that his brother and father were “excited when Hunter agreed to get involved in the Burnham business,” according to the Daily Mail.
“His name was paraded around the house. They would talk about Hunter every second,” he said. But he said he never heard any explicit conversation about Biden being aware of the fraud scheme. Biden and his attorneys did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.
Archer and Hunter Biden both joined the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burma Holdings in April 2014, as previously reported by Breitbart News. That year, Archer was photographed with then-Vice President Joe Biden in Southhampton, New York.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn recently called for a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealing with the Chinese Communist Party in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News.
“The picture that appears to be coming together is that Biden Incorporated has focused on dealing with these foreign entities, and we see Hunter Biden as more or less a centerpiece of this, and then you have Joe and James Biden and other families who you would think must be involved with this via Biden Incorporated,” she said.
“It is troublesome, it is worrisome, this is not good for the country. This is why we need to move forward with a Special Counsel. We need to get a Special Counsel appointed and investigate exactly what happened with these business dealings,” she added.
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