Meanwhile - from a week ago :
Hot water for Hunter Biden is reaching a boiling point
The walls are closing in on Hunter Biden.
The US attorney in Delaware investigating his business affairs has been busy subpoenaing his bank records and calling in his ex-girlfriends to testify in front of a grand jury about his wild spending sprees.
Devon Archer, his former business partner, best friend and fellow Yale alum, faces sentencing Monday, four years after being convicted over a $60 million scheme to defraud one of the poorest Indian tribes in America.
Prosecutors from the Southern District of New York have recommended to US District Judge Ronnie Abrams that Archer serve 30 months in prison, the same as co-defendant Bevan Cooney.
But yesterday, Archer’s lawyer, Matthew Schwartz of Boies Schiller Flexner, asked Abrams for a non-custodial sentence, arguing Archer has suffered enough.
He “has been subject to pretrial supervision for nearly seven years during which he has a spotless record of compliance, has lived an otherwise exemplary life, and has already suffered greatly due to the collateral consequences of his arrest, trial and conviction.”
No further punishment is warranted, because Archer, a former Abercrombie & Fitch model, has “watched his reputation and career systemically crumble” and he “and his family have been affected financially, and are currently severely cash-negative.”
Prosecutors gave short shrift to Archer crying poor, arguing that he “is living in a multimillion-dollar Brooklyn townhouse, and owns a second residence in the Hamptons, both of which have significant equity. He and his wife [Krista, a doctor] own investment assets worth more than several million dollars …
“In short, while Archer may well be living beyond his current means, he is nonetheless living an indisputably privileged lifestyle and nothing about his finances warrants a reduction in sentence.”
It will be up to Abrams, an Obama appointee married to Mueller special counsel prosecutor Greg Andres, whether to show mercy to Archer, 48, on Monday.
She has been kind to him before, when she overturned his original conviction in November 2019, before her decision was reversed on appeal.
She also granted him permission while he was on bail to jet around the world to 24 destinations, from Jamaica and Turks & Caicos to China, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, places where he and Hunter had done business deals leveraging then-VP Joe Biden’s name.
But anything short of a custodial sentence will be seen as a political scandal, considering Archer’s close ties to the Bidens.
Hunter promised Archer in a 2019 text message that he is “part of a great family — not a sideshow, not deserted by them even in your darkest moments. That’s the way Bidens are different, and you are a Biden.”
But in a voice memo recorded the previous year and found on his abandoned laptop, Hunter was less sanguine about Archer’s legal troubles.
“My best friend in business, Devon, has named me as a witness, without telling me, in a criminal case,” he wails. “I’m talking about a f–king criminal case in which Devon has named me as a witness.”
If Archer does end up facing prison time, there is always the possibility that he might cooperate with authorities investigating Hunter’s business dealings in return for a reduction in his sentence.
That prospect must be keeping Hunter awake at night.
The SDNY pointed out in its sentencing submission that
Archer currently has a well-paying job, working for former asbestos attorney Jeff Cooper, a longtime Joe Biden donor.
Cooper’s relationship with the Biden family stretches back two decades to when he ran one of the largest asbestos litigation firms in the country, the Illinois-based SimmonsCooper.
He began filing multimillion-dollar lawsuits in Delaware in 2005 in association with Joe’s late son Beau Biden’s firm Bifferato, Gentilotti & Biden, when Joe was a US senator from Delaware and leader of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.
Cooper found the $30 billion asbestos compensation business to be lucrative, in large part thanks to Joe, who used his power to block asbestos litigation reform when a bill reached the Senate floor, as Paul Sperry from RealClearInvestigations has reported.
When Joe became VP, Cooper put Hunter on the board of his venture capital firm Eudora Global and gave him shares in the business, worth around $80,000 a year, documents on Hunter’s laptop show.
Additionally, Hunter received a “one-time payment” of $300,000 in 2015 from Cooper’s firm Eudora, according to an email on the laptop from Hunter’s then-business partner Eric Schwerin.
SimmonsCooper also put up $1 million in investment capital for Hunter and his Uncle Jim’s abortive attempt in 2009 to acquire a hedge fund.
To add to the incestuous nature of Archer’s ties with the Biden family, his current law firm Boies Schiller Flexner previously paid Hunter $216,000 a year for the honorary role “of counsel,” and its chairman is long-time Joe Biden donor David Boies.
Also causing Hunter sleepless nights is Zoe Kestan, 28, a one-time Pornhub “model” and “lingerie entrepreneur” who stayed with Hunter at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont hotel in 2018 during one of his extended crack benders.
She testified for five hours Feb. 15 before the grand jury in Delaware that is investigating Hunter’s tax affairs, and reportedly provided details of his lavish spending sprees. Also testifying last week was Hunter’s “baby mama,” former stripper Lunden Roberts, who sued him for paternity of their now-3-year-old daughter, whom he has never acknowledged.
Kestan’s name appears in a Suspicious Activity Report compiled by JPMorgan Chase bank and obtained by nonprofit research outfit Marco Polo.
The bank was issued a subpoena in May 2019 by the US attorney in Delaware for transactions involving Hunter, his uncle Jim Biden and partners Archer and Schwerin involving the Bank of China.
Hunter and Kestan’s relationship was rocky, messages on the laptop show.
“Zoe is livid,” he texted a female friend in May 2018. “My father is livid. Everyone is f–king livid. [I] have been hanging out with some seriously f–ked up homeless. I’m a narcissistic altruist, according to Zoe.”
In another text exchange with a bellhop friend from the Chateau Marmont, Hunter says Kestan “really angered me” by recording a conversation between him and the bellhop.
“How the f–k did she get a tape of the two of us talking … about why I need to end it with her — the tape begins with me saying I need her for her contacts … She is so connected I didn’t want to burn bridges. Because she really is connected.”
Connections mean everything in Biden world.
https://nypost.com/2022/02/23/hunter...boiling-point/
Old Hunter
