"The Third Man": Devon Archer
I Almost Wrote a book About Hunter Biden's Former Best Friend...This Week I Met Him....
So, good news following the disappointing tech glitches of Wednesday.
Michael Wolff and I will now bring you the episode you should have seen on Wednesday on Monday at 5pm ET.
And then next Wednesday’s show will feature the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, as scheduled at 5pm.
Fortunately there is bigger and better news than my tech woes.
Tuesday, I had tea with Devon Archer.
For those of you who don’t know who he is: Archer, 50, is Hunter Biden’s former best friend and business partner. It was Archer who introduced Hunter Biden to the Ukraine energy company, Burisma and many other foreign businesses who loved the idea of aligning themselves with Joe Biden’s son. Archer is the one on the far left, in the now infamous 2014 photograph of the Bidens at the Sebonack golf club in Long Island.
The business relationship began in 2009. But in 2016 Archer was charged with securities fraud. After years of complex, drawn out litigation, he was due to serve a prison sentence for a year and a day when, on March 21st President Trump dramatically called him over at the NCAA Wrestling National Championships in Philadelphia and told him he was going to issue him a pardon. He officially pardoned him on March 25th. Archer is now a full-blown MAGA convert.
I have long been fascinated to know the real story of Devon Archer because in all my Epstein reporting and, also during my time at CNN, his name kept cropping up as someone in the room wheeling and dealing with all the same magnates, oligarchs, and VIPs around the world I’d be reporting about.
And the scene described to me was almost always the same: Archer would be busting a gut to put a deal together with foreigners who wanted access to Joe Biden. He’d do all the ground work and then Hunter Biden would show up in some hotel lobby to shake hands, usually drunk or drug-addled, a liability apart from his last name. Archer himself, testified to the House Oversight Committee in July 2023 that – 20 times – he was in the room when Hunter put his father on speaker to help sell the Biden “brand” to an assortment of foreigners, including Russians, Ukrainians and the Chinese.
By the time he delivered that testimony to Congress, Archer had given up on the Bidens; his friendship with Hunter had been completely destroyed. Reportedly, there was even an effort to throw him in prison the day before he went to the Hill to testify.
I discovered the origins of the Archer-Biden relationship in 2022, when I broke the story here of how, under the umbrella of a business, Rosemont Realty, named after the Heinz family farm in Pennsylvania, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer held meetings with two highly influential Russians and potential investors: an oligarch Vladimir Yevtushenkov, whose holding company, Sistema, at one point owned the biggest Russian defense contractor (and who remained unsanctioned by the US under President Biden, but not by the British.) Another was Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow.
I learned that their relationship was seeded at Yale where Archer roomed with the wealthy political scion Chris Heinz (stepson of John Kerry and close friend to the Biden family, especially Hunter).
Unlike Heinz and Biden, Archer was not a Nepo baby. He was from a middle-class background on Long Island. He’d gone to Yale to play lacrosse. He was driven. After graduation, Heinz – who inherited a fortune – trusted Archer so much he stuck him on various boards as his “representative.” As Heinz’s “representative” Archer persuaded investors that Hunter Biden – who had attended Yale Law School while Archer and Heinz were there as undergrads – should join him.
Were it not for Archer’s smarts and energy, according to my reporting, Hunter Biden would likely not have made much money.
He would also not have necessarily attracted the attention of prosecutors who ultimately charged him with tax offenses.
But it was Archer, of the pair, who was first charged with securities fraud in 2016 when he was acting as the chairman of a company, that Hunter Biden was the vice chair of.
In 2018 a jury found him guilty, even though he argued that he had been deceived by a partner. The judge ordered a retrial, citing concerns “that Archer lacked the requisite intent and is thus innocent of the crimes charged in this indictment.” One month before the 2020 election an appeals court reversed the decision.
Just months after the 2020 election Archer co-operated with prosecutors looking into Hunter Biden’s tax and financial records. And in 2023 he delivered his Congressional testimony.
So, I thought about all this and I wrote a book proposal in November 2023 about Archer that was called The Third Man, because he’d been the third man - the outsider - of the Yale trio. And because I sensed that he could yet play a role in somehow bringing down the Bidens.
My then publishers liked it. But I would have had to had to crash it, because of the looming November election (they were not convinced Joe Biden would lose it)… And I didn’t have the bandwidth for speed reporting and writing like that because I was still immersed in The Idaho Four.
And as it turned out, Hunter and Joe Biden collapsed without any more help from Archer.
Even so, Archer’s personal Tom Ripley-like story and that of a friendship gone badly wrong remains of great human interest, on top of the business and political story.
So, when I read that he’d been pardoned, I dialed the number I had for him.
To my amazement, he picked up. “You don’t know me,“ I stammered. “But I am your almost-biographer.” Now that got his attention. I explained I’d had this hunch that he could be pivotal in the 2024 election.
“You weren’t wrong,” he told me, amused, as we sat having tea (for me) and coffee (for him) in the St Regis hotel’s bar on Tuesday afternoon.
My mistake, he said, was that I should have just called him eighteen months ago. He’d have been happy to give me all the inside dope! I had been preparing to do this. But given that he was represented by a Biden ally, the lawyer Matthew L. Schwartz, I had expected there might be a "tap dance” to persuade him to talk.
Just goes to show: when in doubt always pick up the phone!
So, in our meeting that lasted an hour and a half we began to skim the surface of the story he’s already gotten big offers to tell himself in documentary and book form.
A husband and the father of three adolescent kids, he’s in a hurry to get his life and career back on track.
But…drumroll….he’s generously agreed to share some of his experiences, on a Bonus Live Video Chat on Vicky Ward Investigates at Monday April 21st at 5pm.
So, Mark Your Calendars!!! Download the Substack App if you haven’t.
And: Paid Subscribers start sending in your questions…
Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing you all on Monday with Trump biographer Michael Wolff at 5pm.
We’ve done a practice run and, this time, we are ready!
Have a great weekend!
