Hunter Biden Using Dad Was 'Abuse of Soft Power': Devon Archer

A former Burisma official at the center of a congressional investigation into business deals involving President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, broke his silence on recent closed-door testimony he provided to Congress involving the then vice president, including a letter he received acknowledging his relationship with his son dating to a 2011 luncheon.

However, Burisma board member Devon Archer stopped short of suggesting that Joe Biden was directly involved in any business dealings, seemingly supporting Democratic narratives that Hunter Biden was merely selling the "illusion" of access to prospective clients.

In an interview with conservative pundit and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson released Wednesday, Archer said he believed that the letter, which has been public for months, was merely intended to be a "nice gesture" toward him as the younger Biden began building out a consulting business that included Burisma as a client, rather than any explicit acknowledgment of a professional relationship.

However, Archer acknowledged that Hunter Biden may have abused that relationship by invoking his father during business meetings in efforts to woo prospective clients, calling it "an abuse of soft power."

While there has not been proof to support the claims, the strategic consulting business has been central to an ongoing investigation by Republicans in Congress over an alleged influence-peddling scheme involving the Bidens in which Hunter allegedly leveraged his connections to his father to enrich himself while clearing roadblocks for his clients.

Though Joe Biden previously claimed he had no knowledge of his son's business dealings, Archer—who is slated to go to prison for defrauding a Native American tribe in 2018—alleged in closed-door congressional testimony this week that the elder Biden had direct knowledge of those deals, including one episode in which he was dialed in to a business meeting involving other members of Burisma's board.

In his interview with Carlson, Archer claimed that his willingness to work with the younger Biden was largely based around his connections to the then vice president, saying he believed entering into business with him at the time was "a great opportunity for us."

And Hunter Biden, he said, was not afraid to make the most of those connections, including one incident in which he called his father on speaker phone in the middle of a board meeting.

"I don't know if it was an orchestrated call or not," Archer told Carlson. "It certainly was powerful, though. Because, you know, if you're sitting with a foreign business person and you hear the vice president's voice, that's prize enough. I mean, that's pretty impactful stuff for anyone.

"At the time, I thought I hit the jackpot in finding the regulatory environment or a company that can navigate right to the top. But you know, obviously as time has told, you know, being a little bit too close to the sun ends up burning you."

The letter, Carlson suggested in the Wednesday interview, was proof of that relationship, though the letter itself explicitly notes that Archer and Joe Biden never spoke at the 2011 luncheon, which was broadcast on C-SPAN.

The White House slammed the Carlson interview in a statement to Newsweek.

"The President was never in business with his son, and even his son's associates are testifying to Congress that the President never discussed their business dealings and wasn't involved in them," White House spokesman Ian Sams said.

"No amount of Tucker Carlson's spin and misdirection, cherry-picking innocuous niceties to try to mislead people, is going to change that, as much as I'm sure the right-wing disinformation machine wishes it could."

The extent of Archer's claims behind closed doors are still relatively unknown.

While congressional Republicans spearheading the investigation into the Biden family, including Kentucky Representative James Comer, claimed that Archer's Monday testimony was a smoking gun proving improprieties by Joe Biden, Democrats on the committee claimed Archer largely shut down Republican theories the president had been directly involved in his son's business dealings at all, or had ever taken bribes from Burisma board members.

"There is not a shred of evidence of a single conflict of interest of President Biden ever doing anything in connection or in relation to Hunter Biden's business ventures, other than advocating for the removal of a prosecutor general who was advantageous to Burisma," New York Democratic Representative Dan Goldman, who attended the closed-door hearing, told reporters after Archer's testimony.

"The only evidence we have right now of any official action by President Biden in connection to Hunter Biden's business interests is bad for Hunter Biden's business interests."