(Tony Sifert, Headline USA) Longtime Hunter Biden friend and business partner Devon Archer has asked a federal judge for leniency as he faces sentencing for defrauding a Native American tribe out of millions of dollars, according to Just the News.
Archer, who sat with Hunter Biden on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma, was convicted of felony securities fraud in 2018 after he and his partners issued bonds on behalf of the Oglala Sioux Indian tribe and then misappropriated the resulting funds.
In the sentencing memorandum, Archer’s lawyers claim that Archer — “a deeply empathetic and trusting person” who “almost to a fault . . . sees the good in people” — was an unknowing participant in the “criminal scheme.”
Further, the lawyers requested leniency because Archer and his family have “faced a near constant onslaught of vitriolic media attention” because of his association with the Biden family.
“He has lived with the impact on his family, including his three young children who have been traumatized by their father’s prosecution and conviction, which have become matters of national headlines and presidential politics by virtue of Mr. Archer’s association with people of prominence,” the memorandum read.
Archer also used Jonathan Li, the CEO of Bohai Industrial Investment Fund, as a character witness.
A meeting between then-Vice President Joe Biden and Li in Beijing in December 2013 was facilitated by Hunter Biden, Just the News reported.
Recently uncovered emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop reveal that Archer also participated with the then-Vice President’s son in a 2014 scheme “to help find investment opportunities for the China National Offshore Oil Corp,” the New York Post reported.
“If we can connect the dots here between CNOOC and Bursima we can do only that, forever,” Archer wrote Biden in an April 8, 2014 email.
Archer has also reportedly “cooperated completely” with the Federal government in a probe of Hunter Biden’s tax filings conducted by the US Attorney’s Office in Delaware.
