Archer said President Biden was on the phone with Hunter while he was with business associates
Devon Archer reportedly told lawmakers Hunter Biden touted Joe to sell 'the brand'
Senior congressional correspondent Chad Pergram reports the latest from Capitol Hill.
The only House Democrat who attended the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s closed-door meeting with former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer on Monday called on Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., to release the full transcript of Archer’s interview.
"I would urge Chairman Comer, rather than to continue to send out misinformation about what transpired in the transcribed interview, to actually put out the transcript, which he can do as soon as he wants," Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., said on CNN.
"Because I think anyone who reads that transcript – and I was there, so I can tell you what happened – would come away from that believing that Joe Biden had nothing to do with Hunter Biden’s business dealings, derived no benefit from it, received no money, and did not know about anything that Hunter Biden was doing, nor did he ever discuss it with Hunter Biden or the business associates," he said.
WITNESS SAYS JOE BIDEN TALKED TO HUNTER’S BUSINESS ASSOCIATES; GOP SEES SMOKING GUN, DEMS DOWNPLAY
Devon Archer, a former business associate of Hunter Biden, arrives for closed-door testimony with the House Oversight Committee at the O'Neill House Office Building July 31, 2023 in Washington, D.C.
A GOP aide told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that the transcript would be released after it goes through a review process. The committee would first need to get the transcript from the court reporter, and then Archer must review it for corrections before it is made public, the aide said.
Archer spoke with House Oversight staff for roughly five hours on Monday as GOP lawmakers probed what role, if any, President Biden played in his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings. The president has said multiple times that he has never discussed nor participated in business with his son.
However, Archer’s claim that Biden, as vice president, was on the phone with Hunter Biden’s business associates at least 20 times over a 10-year span has Republicans and Democrats drawing differing conclusions over the president’s culpability.
House Oversight Committee member Rep. Dan Goldman, left, talks to reporters as he departs after Devon Archer's interview.
Goldman sought to downplay the exchanges. "Like many people, Hunter spoke with his father every day and would often put his father, occasionally would put his father on to say hello to whomever he happened to be caught at dinner with, and Mr. Archer clarified that was sometimes people that they were having, you know, they were trying to do business with, and it was sometimes friends or other social engagements," Goldman said.
However, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who was also one of the few lawmakers in attendance, stressed that it was the implication of Biden being on the other end of the phone that mattered.
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"He probably forgot to tell you that Devon Archer himself said that was an implication of, of who the ‘Big Guy’ is. I mean, and Archer talked about the ‘Big Guy’ and how Hunter Biden always said, ‘We need to talk to my guy, we need to see when my guy is going to be here,’ and those types of things," Biggs said.
House Oversight Committee member Rep. Andy Biggs, center, disputed some of Rep. Dan Goldman's conclusions about the Devon Archer interview.
Biggs also said Hunter Biden was critical to Burisma because of the "Biden brand," and that the company believed having the then-vice president’s son on the board meant it would be protected from legal scrutiny.
Goldman later said Archer clarified after Biggs left the room that Hunter Biden brought "a D.C. brand" that was "based on his own experience in lobbying, based on his own connections as a lawyer… that in conjunction with the fact that his last name was Biden was Hunter's brand."
Elizabeth Elkind is a reporter for Fox News Digital focused on Congress as well as the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and politics. Previous digital bylines seen at Daily Mail and CBS News.
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