Miranda Devine: Hunter Biden’s shady Russian deals will haunt US President

Hunter Biden's shady collaborations with Russian oligarchs could put heat on the US President, writes Miranda Devine.

The saga of President Biden’s wayward son Hunter and his overseas business dealings has taken on a disquieting new significance with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

After all, the Biden family and their partners made millions of dollars from shady characters in Ukraine and Russia during the eight years Joe Biden was vice president and responsible for that part of the world. The fuse has been burning on the Biden family’s influence peddling schemes ever since Hunter abandoned his laptop at a Mac repair shop in Delaware in April 2019, two weeks before his father announced his run for president.

Now, with uncanny timing, Ukraine and Russia are back in the news, just as the legal noose begins to tighten on Hunter, and his former business partner and best friend Devon Archer.

The Delaware grand jury investigating Hunter’s business affairs has been subpoenaing his bank records and calling in ex-girlfriends to testify about his wild spending sprees.

Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer was sentenced in Manhatten on Tuesday.

Zoe Kestan, 28, a one-time Pornhub “model” and “lingerie entrepreneur” who stayed with Hunter at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont hotel during his extended crack bender in 2018, testified for five hours recently.

Hunter’s “baby mama”, the former stripper Lunden Roberts who sued him for paternity of their now three-year-old daughter, also testified.

Then on Monday, Archer, 48, was sentenced in a Manhattan court to a jail term of one year and one day over a scheme to defraud one of the poorest Indian tribes in America. He also was ordered to pay his share of $43 million in restitution to victims and forfeit $15 million.

It was the day Archer had been trying to avoid for six years, since he first was charged over the $60 million fraud in 2016. Judge Ronnie Abrams originally set aside his jury conviction, but her decision was reversed on appeal and Archer failed to have his conviction overturned in the Supreme Court last year.

So, Monday was the end of the legal line for Hunter’s charismatic Yale University chum and fellow board member of the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

The Delaware grand jury investigating Hunter Biden’s business affairs has been subpoenaing his bank records and calling in ex-girlfriends to testify. Picture: Democratic National Convention/AFP

The crime was “too serious”, said Judge Abrams, for the non-custodial sentence Archer’s lawyer requested, but prosecutors had asked for 30 months, for parity with his co-defendants. The judge cited Covid-19 as a reason for lenient treatment because, “conditions inside our prisons are extraordinarily difficult”.

Archer read a statement to the court expressing “deep remorse for the victims of the crime” and complaining about “corrupt actors in the world and the vicious media.”

He explained he was “doing too many things at once and not paying enough attention … all the business deals I was involved with and the overseas activities. I’ve learned the lesson the hardest way possible”.

But Archer’s “overseas activities” were intertwined with Hunter’s business deals, although the president’s son has not been connected to the Indian tribal fraud.

Hunter and Archer joined the Burisma board in April 2014, and each were paid $83,333 a month during the period when Joe was VP.

Archer visited Joe in the White House, a week before he joined Burisma’s board, and posed for a photograph that would come to haunt the then-VP.

The picture was posted on the Burisma website the next day, before it was urgently removed at the request of Demetra Lambros, the VP’s Chief Counsel.

“Hey. Guys. There is apparently a photo of Devon and the VP on Burisma’s website,” wrote Hunter’s associate, Eric Schwerin, in an email found on Hunter’s abandoned laptop.

“Demetra (VP Counsel) called and asked that we tell Burisma they need to take it down (legally they aren’t comfortable with the VP’s picture being up on the site as what seems like an endorsement).”

US President Joe Biden (right) hugs his son Hunter Biden and US First Lady Jill Biden after being sworn in as the 46th US President. Picture: Olivier Douliery/AFP

The same day that Joe invited Archer into the White House, the UK’s Serious Fraud Office was granted an order to freeze $23 million in the British bank accounts of Burisma’s oligarch owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. The move was part of a joint MI5-FBI corruption investigation into ousted pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych and his associates, who were alleged to have stolen $100 billion from Ukraine.

As soon as Hunter and Archer were signed up to the Burisma board, Zlochevsky wasted no time pressuring them to use their influence in Washington to help him evade the international criminal probe.

While his father was visiting Kyiv, on April 22, 2014, Hunter sent an email to Archer titled “JRB in UKR”, with a quote from Joe’s speech to the Ukrainian parliament: “Mr Biden spoke of the ‘humiliating threats’ faced by Ukraine and said the United States was ‘ready to assist’. But he also stressed that Ukraine needs to … reduce its crippling dependence on Russia for supplies of natural gas”.

“Wow,” replied Archer. “We need to make sure this rag tag temporary government in the Ukraine understands the value of Burisma to its very existence”.

Joe would meet Zlochevsky’s 2IC, Vadym Pozharskyi in April 2015 in Washington, DC at a dinner arranged by Hunter and Archer at Café Milano, a popular Italian restaurant. Joe’s spokespeople initially denied any meeting took place before acknowledging six months later that the VP had “dropped by” the dinner. Hunter’s overseas business associates from Russia and Kazakhstan were also invited to the dinner with Joe.

In the end, Zlochevsky’s British accounts were unfrozen, and the MI5 investigation was foiled after an intervention by the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, which the US state department believed was bribed. A new chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, subsequently was appointed but his renewed efforts to bring Zlochevsky to justice would place him on a collision course with Joe.

Another of Hunter and Archer’s overseas activities took place at Lake Como, Italy, where they met Russian oligarch Elena Baturina, the wife of the corrupt former mayor of Moscow, in 2014. Weeks before the meeting Baturina wired $3.5 million to a bank account associated with Archer, which was identified in “suspicious activity reports” filed with the US Treasury Department.

The millions paid to Hunter, Archer and their partners by Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs at the very least raises the prospect that the president is compromised during the current crisis.

Now, only a presidential pardon will save Archer from jail and financial ruin.

Hunter promised Archer in a 2019 text message that he is “part of a great family — not a sideshow, not deserted by them even in your darkest moments.”

Whether the vow includes a pardon will be seen in the next 60 days before Archer has to surrender to authorities.

There is another way he could avoid jail - if he were to co-operate with prosecutors investigating Hunter’s business dealings, they could recommend he serve no time.

It’s enough to give Hunter sleepless nights.

Miranda Devine is in New York to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph