Joe Biden spoke with his son’s business partners – Hunter Biden’s partner confirmed this

Republicans have accused US President Joe Biden of lying that he was not involved in his son Hunter’s business in Ukraine. The corresponding statement was made on July 31 by the chairman of the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee, James Comer, based on the testimony of Biden Jr. partner Devon Archer. According to them, in 10 years, Biden Sr. spoke 20 times with his son’s partners on the speakerphone, including from 2014 to 2019, when Hunter served on the board of directors of the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma. Comer’s statement, posted on the committee’s website, said that “Devon Archer’s testimony confirms that Joe Biden lied to the American people when he said he was not aware of and was not involved in his son’s business dealings.” According to Comer, in fact, Hunter Biden “sold” the name of his father, the former Vice President of the United States, to enrich the family.

Democrats assessed Archer’s testimony differently. According to Congressman Dan Goldman, who was present at the testimony, all of the conversations mentioned were “exchanges of pleasantries and conversations about the weather” – with no mention of the Biden Jr. cases. At the same time, Hunter Biden, according to Goldman, was selling partners the “illusion of access” to his father, appropriating his merits for what Joe Biden did as vice president. The White House takes a similar position. According to his spokesman Ian Sams, Archer’s testimony demonstrates that “he never heard President Biden discuss business with his son or his associates or do anything wrong.” Republican Congressman Andy Biggs, a member of the House Oversight Committee, disagreed with Goldman. In his opinion, Archer’s testimony directly related to President Biden. Biggs said Archer’s statements under interrogation meant that without the Biden family’s personal brand, Burisma would have gone out of business sooner. As the Republican noted, people knew that the Bidens were behind Burisma, and were simply afraid to cross her path.

Hunter Biden joined the board of directors of Burisma in 2014. The company was founded in 2002 by the former Minister of Ecology of Ukraine Mykola Zlochevsky, in 2014 he was charged with illegal enrichment. Burisma has developed deposits in the Dnieper-Donetsk, Carpathian and Azov basins. In 2014, the company was at the center of a corruption scandal: the UK authorities were investigating money laundering and froze its London assets of $23 million. In January 2015, they had to be unblocked: the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office refused to provide the necessary documents for the investigation. In 2016, according to media reports, Biden himself, in order to protect his son, put pressure on Kyiv to fire the country’s Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was in charge of the Burisma case. Shokin was nevertheless removed and, according to the former and. O. Attorney General of Ukraine Yuriy Sevruk, after Biden’s personal requests to then-President Petro Poroshenko in exchange for $1 billion in US financial assistance. According to Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, under President Donald Trump, the Department of Justice was investigating the Burisma case, closing it eight months later due to insufficient evidence about the involvement of Biden Sr.

Without a transcript of Archer’s testimony, we still have to rely on the words of the Republicans and Democrats present there, and their statements contradict each other, notes Igor Slabykh, a lawyer practicing in the United States. The only thing they agree on is that in the 10 years of Archer’s work with Hunter Biden, he called his father 20 times. Republicans talk about the guilt of the president, because, in their opinion, there was a “trade in interest and access to the body.” Democrats object that, since business was not discussed in the conversations, it is impossible to draw conclusions about the guilt of Biden Sr. According to Slabykh, even based on the comments of the Republicans, it is impossible to find direct evidence of the involvement of the US president in his son’s business. You can admit that Biden Sr. spoke to unknown people on the speakerphone, but talking about the weather and talking about business are two completely different things. The expert suggests that the prospect of impeachment will not be affected by Archer’s testimony, and the Republicans have not yet taken real action for this.

Archer’s testimony is vague, does not provide direct evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in the Burisma case, said Vladimir Vasiliev, chief researcher at the Institute for the US and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. They did not give solid grounds for Biden’s impeachment, but they are bringing the moment closer when the trend towards further investigation will intensify. The problem remains open and will become more acute by the 2024 elections. According to the expert, the Republicans, who want to collect serious evidence for impeachment, will put forward more serious accusations before the elections. Archer’s testimony creates a more complex thread that the parties will investigate and spin to achieve political goals, the expert concluded.