Washington, D.C. (July 31, 2023)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, issued the following statement after the Committee concluded a transcribed interview with Devon Archer:

“For months, Chairman Comer has asked America to trust that he has evidence of criminal wrongdoing by President Biden as Fox News anchors have questioned his persistent claims about that.  Now, Hunter Biden’s own business partner has stated that:  President Biden was not involved in his son’s business affairs, and that President Biden was never asked to, nor did he, take any official actions in relation to those business matters.  Mr. Archer stated that President Biden and his son talked every day, especially after Beau Biden’s untimely death.  He explained that, over the span of nearly a decade, he witnessed around 20 of those calls happen while other people were present in the room.  Those calls were all about mundane subjects like the weather, geography, and other niceties and pleasantries.  According to Mr. Archer, the calls were not about Hunter Biden’s business dealings.  Mr. Archer also confirmed that Hunter Biden was selling the ‘illusion’ of access to his father.  

“With Burisma being the focus of Republican questioning at today’s transcribed interview with Mr. Archer, it’s clear that Chairman Comer is simply chasing the long-discredited bribery allegations first peddled and trumpeted by Rudy Giuliani and his team.  As much as Chairman Comer tries to pretend that there’s something new and shocking here, today’s interview merely provides further confirmation that he is pursuing a baseless re-run of allegations that were thoroughly investigated and rejected by Trump’s own Justice Department in 2020 and rehashed in the Senate Republicans’ 2020 investigation of the same bank records that the Trump-led Department of Justice and the press corps had already obtained and assessed.

“Indeed, the only real substantive development is that the world now knows that Rudy Giuliani’s former associate Lev Parnas and the head of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, have both contradicted and wholly rebutted the false accusations against President Biden.  Parnas has emphasized that there is nothing to the corruption allegations and has called upon Chairman Comer to call off his ‘wild goose chase.’

“Today, Mr. Archer explicitly stated that he is unaware of any $5 million payments to the Bidens and did not believe the allegations of bribery in the FBI Form 1023 were credible, thus debunking the unverified tip sheet Republicans released last week.  Furthermore, Mr. Archer explained that it was common for Mr. Zlochevsky and other Ukrainian executives to brag, exaggerate, and lie about purported payments.  Mr. Archer explained he was not aware of any actual evidence of corruption, wrongdoing, or impropriety on the part of President Biden.

“Ultimately, if you take Chairman Comer’s word that this investigation is ‘only about President Biden,’ then his obsessive fascination with the President’s son makes it obvious that his ‘priority investigation’ today is just a desperate effort to distract everyone from former President Donald Trump’s mounting criminal  indictments and deepening legal morass.  Try as he might, Chairman Comer has yet again failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden.  Meanwhile, Trump remains a one-man crime wave.”

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