President Donald Trump said he plans to pardon a one-time business associate of Hunter Biden who testified before a Republican-led House committee that tried to link former President Joe Biden with his son’s business dealings.
Trump told the New York Post on Sunday that he will grant “a full pardon” to Devon Archer.
In 2023, Archer told the James Comer-led House Oversight Committee that Hunter Biden used his dad’s “brand” to sell the “illusion of access” to his politician father.
However, while Archer said the first son would sometimes put his father on speakerphone to impress business clients, he said Joe Biden was not involved in their work and “never once spoke about any business dealings.”
In 2018, Archer was convicted as part of a scheme to defraud a community of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota.
He and others allegedly used millions of dollars in bonds issued by the tribal community’s business arm for their own gain, including “buying jewelry, luxury cars and a new home,” according to prosecutors.
They were supposed to have invested the funds.
The Bidens were not involved in the scheme, although some participants who defrauded the tribe used Hunter Biden’s name to boost their credibility, court records show.
Archer was sentenced in 2022 to a year in prison for “defrauding a Native American tribe to issue $60 million in economic-development bonds and then diverting the proceeds for his own use.”
The Supreme Court rejected an appeal from him in the case last year.
On Sunday, Trump claimed to the Post, without offering any evidence, that Archer “was screwed by the Bidens. They destroyed him like they tried to destroy a lot of people.”
Archer, meanwhile, expressed his “deepest thanks” to the president and claimed he was a “victim of a convoluted lawfare effort intended to destroy and silence me.”
The Post reported that Trump informed Archer of the pardon on Saturday night when both attended the NCAA wrestling finals in Philadelphia.
Trump was apparently persuaded by Tony Bobulinski, another former Hunter Biden associate, who was there as part of the president’s entourage, the newspaper said.
Also in Trump’s entourage was Gary Shapley, an IRS whistleblower who testified to Congress that Hunter Biden received special treatment during an inquiry into his taxes.
Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, another IRS investigator who testified, were recently promoted by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to serve as senior advisers.
Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to several tax offenses last year, after a plea deal collapsed.
His father pardoned him shortly before leaving office, breaking a previous pledge not to do so and igniting a wave of bipartisan backlash for the turnabout.
The House Oversight investigation, meanwhile, found no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
Even so, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy instructed Comer, a Kentucky Republican, to lead an impeachment inquiry in the fall of 2023.
Comer’s inquiry also failed to find any wrongdoing by Biden and, despite claiming to have found “impeachable conduct” in an August 2024 report, didn’t recommend Congress pursue any articles of impeachment.
