WASHINGTON — Former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer is asking the Supreme Court to order a new trial in his fraud case in a desperate attempt to avoid serving a one-year prison sentence.
Archer unveiled explosive new details in July about President Biden’s involvement in his son’s foreign business ventures after partnering with Hunter, now 53, on deals in China and Ukraine — preceding the launch of a House impeachment inquiry in September.
A New York jury convicted Archer in June 2018 of taking part in the selling of more than $60 million in fraudulent bonds for an Oglala Sioux tribal entity in South Dakota.
Archer and two other Burnham Financial Group executives were found guilty of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and securities fraud.
Hunter Biden was vice chairman of Burnham and earned up to $200,000, but was not charged over the scheme.
In addition to prison time, Archer was ordered to forfeit $15.7 million and pay restitution of $43.4 million.
Archer’s conviction was overturned in November 2018 by Manhattan US District Judge Ronnie Abrams, who upheld the convictions of Archer’s two codefendants while ruling there wasn’t enough evidence against him.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated Archer’s conviction in 2020.
The Supreme Court accepts few cases and rejected an earlier appeal from Archer in 2021.
Archer’s attorneys argue in their latest filing that the case includes important unresolved legal matters, including whether “district courts [have] discretion to reweigh the evidence when evaluating a new trial motion, as eleven other federal courts of appeals have held to varying degrees, or whether the rule requires a district court to defer to the verdict unless there is some concern beyond the weight of the evidence, as the Second Circuit held in this case.”
The appeal, filed Monday, also argues that “[t]he district court here made a simple arithmetic error in calculating [Archer’s] guidelines, resulting in a higher sentencing range” and asked the nine justices to rule it was wrong.
Archer told the House Oversight Committee on July 31 that Joe Biden had many previously known interactions with his son’s partners, including about 20 speaker-phone calls during business meetings.
Archer said Joe Biden had coffee with Chinese government-linked businessman Jonathan Li during a December 2013 trip to Beijing while vice president — rather than a handshake as previously reported — before Hunter Biden, who was also on the trip, launched state-backed investment fund BHR Partners with Li as CEO.
The sitting vice president later greeted Li on the phone during a subsequent Hunter trip to China, Archer said.
Archer also recounted that then-Vice President Biden attended two dinners at DC’s Café Milano restaurant in 2014 and 2015 with his son’s patrons from Eastern Europe and Central Asia — rather than just one dinner as previously reported.
An attendee of the 2015 meal, Vadym Pozharskyi, was an adviser to the board of Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company that paid Hunter up to $1 million per year beginning in April 2014 to serve on its board as his father led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.
Archer also was on Burisma’s board.
Archer further testified that Hunter Biden in December 2015 stepped away from a meeting at the Four Seasons in Dubai to “call DC” with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky and Pozharsky.
“Listen, I did not hear this phone call, but he — he called his dad,” Archer said.
An FBI informant file released in July says Zlochevsky complained in 2016 that he was “coerced” into paying $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for the then-vice president’s help in ousting Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, who was removed from office in March 2016 after a sustained campaign by Joe Biden.
The bribery claim has not been substantiated.
Another attendee of at least one of the DC dinners was former Moscow first lady Yelena Baturina, a billionaire who sought out US property investments with the then-second son and Archer.
Baturina transferred $3.5 million to a corporate entity controlled by Hunter Biden and Archer in February 2014.
Joe Biden posed with Kazakhstani business associates of his son at one of the dinners, including Kenes Rakishev, who wired Hunter $142,300 to buy a luxury car in 2014.
House Democrats highlighted other parts of Archer’s testimony, including his recollection that Joe Biden didn’t directly discuss business in his presence and instead gave “general niceties and, you know, conversation in general, you know, about geography, about the weather, whatever it may be.”
Archer has not clarified some key outstanding questions about Hunter Biden’s business, including the reason the $3.5 million was transferred by Baturina.
Archer told lawmakers he was unaware of the reason before his attorney headed off further inquiries about the Russian billionaire, who Archer said also invested more than $100 million in his Rosemont Realty firm, in which Hunter Biden also was involved.