(LifeSiteNews) — Former Hunter Biden business associate Devon Archer sat down with conservative media titan Tucker Carlson for an interview posted online Wednesday, days after Archer spoke with lawmakers investigating allegations of corruption, and influence-peddling by the Biden family.
“Obviously, the brand of Biden adds a lot of power when your dad’s vice president,” Archer told Carlson in the 12-minute video posted to social media.
Ep. 12 Part 1. Devon Archer pic.twitter.com/ElEzAZtBcA
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 2, 2023
A former colleague and close friend of U.S. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, Archer has been seen by Republicans as a crucial witness in their investigation into allegations that Joe Biden and his family members engaged in corrupt business dealings while Biden was vice president of the United States under Barack Obama.
On Monday, Archer reportedly told lawmakers during an hours-long, closed-door interview that Joe Biden was placed on speakerphone during Hunter’s business meetings on some 20 occasions. He reportedly stopped short of saying that the elder Biden talked about business or that he made any policy decisions in light of his son’s business dealings.
READ: Witness says Hunter Biden spoke to his father during many overseas business meetings
In the Wednesday interview with Carlson, however, Archer said the calls with Joe Biden during business meetings seemed like “an abuse of soft power.”
According to Archer, Hunter Biden’s advisory business was designed to connect clients to the younger Biden’s large Washington, D.C. network and give them access to his “know-how” in connection to “the Biden brand.”
“The initial idea around the business is they were going to provide the government insight and an additional network to raise capital and then deal with regulatory issues that you might have at the corporate level,” Archer explained.
“Understanding a regulatory environment means selling access at the end of the day,” he said, noting that the “tactical” strategies often involve getting in touch with lobbyists or former government employees who have contacts within regulatory agencies in order to “get things put to the front of the line.”
After Hunter was appointed to the board of directors of Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma Holdings, the younger Biden “led a team that had a sophisticated [understanding of regulation].”
“You’ve got to be an expert in ‘knowing the guy,’ and he was the guy that was the expert in ‘knowing the guy,’” Archer said.
“And who was the guy he knew?” Carlson asked.
As LifeSiteNews has reported, Joe Biden has been connected with the nickname “the big guy,” including in an email recovered from Hunter’s abandoned laptop in which Hunter allegedly asked a Chinese business associate for 10% for “the big guy.”
Declining to name a particular “guy” with whom Hunter had a strategic relationship, Archer told Carlson that Hunter “knew a lot of people,” including close family members, and acknowledged that Carlson was “pointing to the father being the key relationship” without actually affirming the implication.
Responding to the claims that Hunter Biden was “trading on his father’s name,” Archer noted that “at the end of the day, he had the best advantage to do that.” However, he said Hunter began to face an “Icarus issue” because he was “too close” to his powerful connections, triggering “scrutiny” and resulting in “a lot of destruction in businesses over a number of years.”
Archer also reiterated his statement that Joe Biden had been on speakerphone during roughly 20 business meetings involving Hunter and his associates over a 10-year period.
“I think I can definitively say, at particular dinners or meetings, [Joe Biden] knew there were business associates,” Archer said. “To be completely clear on the calls, I don’t know if it was an orchestrated call-in or not.”
“It certainly was powerful, though, because you’re sitting with a foreign business person and you hear the vice president’s voice, that’s prize enough,” he said. “That’s pretty impactful stuff.”
Democrats, including Rep. Dan Goldman of New York, have attempted to argue that Biden’s phone calls with Hunter during business meetings were simply “casual conversations” that didn’t relate to business or financial arrangements.
Responding to that criticism, Carlson observed that he is very close to his own children but has never been on speakerphone with them during a business meeting.
“I mean, what is that? A grown man calling his dad on speakerphone during a business meeting?” Carlson said, laughing.
While noting that sometimes it was the elder Biden himself who called in during the meetings, Archer noted that “the power to have that access and that conversation — it’s not in a scheduled conference call and it’s a part of your family — that’s like the pinnacle of power in D.C.”
“In the rear-view, it’s an abuse of soft power,” he said.
Toward the end of the short segment, Carlson showed Archer a letter addressed to him from Joe Biden, dated January 20, 2011.
In the letter, Biden apologized to Archer for being unable to meet with him during a luncheon with then-president of China President Hu, adding that he hoped to be able to see him soon and was “happy” Archer and Hunter were “together.”
“It was kind of the beginning of our partnership, and he was thanking me, and thanking Hunter, I think, at the end of the day, for bringing this idea of this government, regulatory, strategic advisory business into the private equity world,” Archer told Carlson, adding that he thought “at the time I hit the jackpot in finding the regulatory environment or company that could navigate right to the top.”
“But, obviously, as time has told, being a little bit too close to the sun ends up burning you,” Archer said.
As LifeSiteNews has reported, Republican lawmakers are investigating whether Hunter and Joe Biden engaged in “peddling access” through domestic and international business dealings “to enrich themselves, often to the detriment of U.S. interests.”
In a 2020 FBI informant document, a confidential source broadly suggested that Ukrainian corporation Burisma made multimillion-dollar payments to several members of the Biden family amid an investigation then underway by Ukraine’s prosecutor general Viktor Shokin.
READ: Sen. Grassley publishes unclassified document alleging Biden bribery scheme in Ukraine
Joe Biden later publicly boasted that he had threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid from Ukraine if they didn’t fire Shokin. Shokin was fired shortly thereafter. Other reports claim that Biden involved himself in Shokin’s ouster because the Ukrainian prosecutor had failed to investigate corruption in the country.
As evidence continues to emerge that Hunter Biden traded his father’s name to land business deals overseas, the Biden administration has moved from denying any knowledge of Hunter’s business dealings to simply denying involvement in them.