Hunter Biden joined Burisma Holding’s board to “legally represent the company” in the United States, Devon Archer told Tucker Carlson during an interview released Friday.
Archer’s claims that Hunter was a legal representative of Burisma are important because IRS agent whistleblowers testified Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) violations were a part of the Hunter Biden criminal probe, warranting a special counsel. FARA specifies that Americans representing foreign entities must publicly disclose the representation.
Archer, Hunter Biden’s best friend in business, told Carlson that Burisma deployed the president of Poland to first attract Devon Archer to become a board member. After Archer accepted the board position, he began to get the impression Burisma invited him on the board due to his relationship with the president’s son, Archer told Carlson.
“And so what I did is I brought him [Hunter Biden] on board as counsel to legally represent the company and help them to basically have a firm in D.C. that would look out for their best interests,” Archer said.
In 2014, Archer and Hunter Biden both joined the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company with legal challenges, as it was under investigation for wrongdoing. In turn, Burisma paid Hunter Biden $83,000 each month to be a board member and provide the Biden brand.
According to IRS Agent Gary Shapley, the Justice Department investigated Hunter Biden for violating FARA while Shapley was on the case. “In my transcript, I do say there is a FARA issue at play,” he said.
“We are not a part of the investigation anymore,” IRS Agent Joseph Ziegler told lawmakers. “That’s our whole point of a special counsel.”
“I still view that a special counsel for the case would have cut through the toughest problems that continue to make problems for this case,” Ziegler said.
In late July, Hunter Biden was set to plead guilty to tax and gun violations in a sweetheart plea deal that would have immunized him from further legal action.
The plea deal fell apart after the judge questioned if it covered future potential charges from the Department of Justice’s ongoing investigation. The prosecution said the deal did not include any potential future FARA violations.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.