Hunter Biden’s beleaguered former business partner, Devon Archer, will receive a full and unconditional pardon, President Trump revealed exclusively to The New York Post.
The president promised Archer the pardon when they met at the NCAA wrestling championships in Philadelphia Saturday night, an encounter arranged by another former Hunter Biden associate-turned-whistleblower, Tony Bobulinski.
“He’s getting a full pardon,” Trump told me Sunday. “He was screwed by the Bidens. They destroyed him like they tried to destroy a lot of people.
“A full pardon,” Trump repeated, describing Archer as an “anti-Biden person” because of his pivotal role in exposing Biden corruption.
The presidential clemency will end a decade-long ordeal for Archer, who was facing jail time for securities fraud over a bad deal he was involved in with Hunter Biden in 2015.
‘Politically exposed’
“I want to extend my deepest thanks to President Trump,” Archer said Sunday. “I am grateful to the president for recognizing that I was the victim of a convoluted lawfare effort intended to destroy and silence me.
“Like so many people, my life was devastated by the Biden family’s selfish disregard for the truth and for the peace of mind and happiness of others. The Bidens talk about justice, but they don’t mean it,” he said. “I am grateful that the American people are now well aware of this reality.”
Hunter was the original target of the Southern District of New York investigation that ensnared Archer. As the son of Joe Biden, the vice president at the time, Hunter was deemed a “politically exposed person” in suspicious activity reports filed by a Morgan Stanley risk assessor.
Hunter was paid $200,000 as vice chairman of the financial services company involved in the $60 million tribal bonds fraud, while Archer says he lost millions when the firm collapsed. Yet, in the end, Hunter escaped unscathed, without charges or even having to testify, while Archer was convicted of fraud in 2018.
Archer has been on a legal roller coaster ever since, a victim of what he calls the “Obama-Biden legal apparatus” that protected Hunter.
District Court Judge Ronnie Abrams threw out Archer’s jury conviction in 2018, declaring his innocence and citing insufficient evidence that he knew about or benefited from the fraud.
But, two years later, Archer’s conviction was reinstated on appeal, and in 2022 he was sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay almost $60 million in fines and restitution, only to have the sentence overturned on a technicality and a resentencing scheduled for later this year.
The legal odyssey has taken its toll on Archer, 51, his wife Krista, and their three children.
“I want to thank my wife from the bottom of my heart for keeping the family intact in these fragile years,” Archer said. “I never wanted any of this brought upon my family, [but] I now have the opportunity to return my full focus to family, friends, and professional life.”
His name appears hundreds of times in Hunter’s abandoned “laptop from hell” but never among the sordid crack binges and sex addiction that were part of the former first son’s secret life, which was mostly hidden from his business partners.
Hunter once called Archer his “best friend in business,” and Joe often thanked Archer for taking care of his hapless son.
But the Biden family abandoned Archer as soon as he became a liability to them.
Archer became one of the first whistleblowers to testify at the House impeachment inquiry into Joe’s involvement in Hunter’s influence-peddling.
Archer revealed that he heard Hunter put his father on speakerphone with foreign business associates at least two dozen times.
He also testified that, days before Joe flew to Ukraine to demand the ousting of the prosecutor investigating Burisma, Hunter’s Ukrainian business partners phoned urgently and asked Hunter to get his father on the line.
Archer’s courage in testifying despite intense legal pressure was crucial in exposing Biden’s corruption.
Tit for tat pardons
Joe Biden gave his son a full presidential pardon in December, weeks before he left the Oval Office, despite having vowed that he would never do such a thing.
The pardon covered any crimes Hunter may have committed, stretching back 11 years to the start of 2014, covering all the Ukrainian grift.
It is sweet symmetry that President Trump, who also was victimized by Biden administration lawfare, has now delivered justice for Archer.
Bobulinski was another hero who exposed Biden corruption. As Hunter’s former business partners on a Chinese deal, he tried to alert the FBI before the 2020 election to the national security risk of Hunter and his uncle Jim Biden making tens of millions of dollars selling Joe’s influence to shady characters linked to the Chinese Communist Party.
He testified to the impeachment inquiry that Joe was directly involved in his son and brother’s influence peddling and was referred to as “the Big Guy” by Hunter’s partners.
Bobulinski and Archer forged a friendship last year based on their mutual contempt for the Bidens. They campaigned together for Trump in Pennsylvania, the state that was instrumental in Trump’s election victory and was the scene of his near assassination.
Bobulinski also enlisted the champion Penn State wrestling team — where he once wrestled and was captain — as Trump’s secret weapon.
On Saturday night at the NCAA wrestling finals in Philadelphia, “Scranton Joe” Biden’s stronghold, Trump was given a hero’s welcome. Bobulinski, as Penn State wrestling royalty, was sitting among the president’s entourage and saw his chance to advocate for his friend Archer.
To complete the cosmic synergy, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley was sitting in the stadium next to Archer. Shapley’s exposure of DOJ obstruction of his five-year tax investigation of Hunter upended the sweetheart deal prosecutors had planned to give him.
After two years of retaliation and ostracism from his bosses, Shapley has been promoted by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to be deputy chief of IRS criminal investigations and starts Monday as a special advisor to guide reform at the tax agency along with his fellow good guy whistleblower Joe Ziegler.
After Penn State won its fourth straight team title Saturday, Trump asked Bobulinski to bring Archer over so he could tell him that he was granting him a pardon.
Sometimes, the good guys really do come out on top.
