For months House Republican Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer has been making damning allegations about President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and what Republicans now call the “Biden Crime Family,” while promising to produce evidence to back up his claims.
Chairman Comer has never proven President Biden has accepted any bribe, much less the $5 million bribe Republicans have repeatedly implied was offered and accepted.
On Monday, behind closed doors, Comer’s Oversight Committee heard testimony, not under oath but under penalty of perjury, from Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer.
During the approximately four hours he testified, with his counsel present, Archer stated there was no bribe, and he had no knowledge of any bribe.
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From the transcript released by the Oversight Committee on Thursday:
Mr. Schwartz. Are you aware of a $5 million payment —
Mr. Archer. No.
Mr. Schwartz. — to one Biden and a $5 million payment to another?
Mr. Archer. No.
Mr. Schwartz. You ever hear anything about that?
Mr. Archer. In that document.
That document is the now-infamous FD-1023 that U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released against the wishes of the Dept. of Justice, which took time to show it in a SCIF to several members of Congress.
It is essentially a transcribed record of a second-hand tip that has never been proven.
Moments later in the Archer testimony:
Q If someone were to conclude from this that this is evidence, this Form 1023 is evidence that Joe Biden was bribed by Mykola Zlochevsky, would you disagree with that conclusion?
A. Yeah, I would.
And still later:
Q In other words, it’s not that Hunter Biden was influencing U.S. policy. It’s that Hunter Biden was falsely giving the Burisma executives the impression that he had any influence over U.S. policy.
A I think that’s fair.
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Later:
Q. …Hunter Biden talked to his dad a lot. that right?
A. He talked to him every day.
Q. He was his son.
A. Correct.
Q. Father and son talked all the time.
A. Uh-huh.
Q. In 2015, in spring of 2015, Beau Biden died. Is that right?
A. That’s correct.
Q Did the frequency of interactions between Hunter Biden and his father increase after Beau Biden’s death?
A I would say yes.
Q Did Joe Biden regularly check in on his son who’s admitted he had issues with —
A Every day.
Q — drugs and other issues?
A Uh-huh.
Q. Yes?
A Yes. Sorry.
Q In the context of those conversations, did you ever witness them discussing the substance of Hunter Biden’s business?
A. No.
The Washington Post‘s Philip Bump on Thursday wrote, “Devon Archer said the opposite of what Republicans claimed.”
Bump explains that on Monday, shortly after the Devon Archer testimony concluded – testimony that Chairman Comer, according to the transcript, which recorded everyone present – did not attend: “testimony for which Comer wasn’t present,” as Bump writes, Comer and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan appeared on Fox News for an interview with Sean Hannity.
“Archer’s testimony was enormously damaging to President Biden, they suggested, with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) insisting that Archer’s testimony made the bribery allegation he’d first introduced two months ago ‘more credible.’ That allegation centered on the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, where Hunter Biden and Archer once sat on its board,” Bump writes.
As the transcript proves, Comer was not telling the truth.
Again, Archer said, the only time he had ever even heard a $5 million bribe was in there FD-1023, which was from an unnamed second-hand source.
“What Archer said not only doesn’t comport with the presentations made by Comer and Jordan on television (which were obviously wrong from the outset), his testimony undermines the idea that Burisma wanted Shokin fired, that Zlochevsky paid any bribe — and, crucially, that Joe Biden was involved in any of this,” Bump reveals.
“Archer severely undercut Republican claims about Hunter Biden’s interactions with his father,” he adds.
“So,” Bump continues, “he was asked, did Hunter Biden ever ask his father to take official actions on behalf of his business partners? ‘He did not,’ Archer said. ‘He did not ask him — to my knowledge, I never saw him say, do anything for any particular business.'”
Bump then criticizes Comer.
“Consider the first words out of Comer’s mouth in that interview with Hannity: ‘Every day this bribery scandal becomes more credible.’ In fact, Archer’s testimony pointed precisely in the opposite direction.”