Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer, urged him to spill the beans

Miranda Devin

Opinion

as if Miranda Devin

May 7, 2023 | 10:17 p.m

As Hunter Biden faces possible felony charges this week, his former best friend Devon Archer made a last-ditch plea to stay out of prison Tuesday as his appeal was heard in a lower Manhattan court.

As he grows more desperate, friends who know Hunter’s mindset are telling him to accept the fact that Biden threw him under the bus and won’t be granted a last-minute presidential pardon.

He urged him to save himself by using his knowledge of the Biden family’s influence-buying tactics, which he had a front-row seat to for four years during Joe Biden’s vice presidency.

WH meet-&-greet

Archer was present at a meeting Hunter arranged for his foreign business partners to meet or talk to his father on the phone.

Archer and Hunter were famously photographed visiting the White House office with a VPN just weeks before they joined the board of the defunct Ukrainian energy company Burima.

Judge Richard Sullivan’s appointment of three judges to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard the case on Tuesday, was a cruel blow, a source close to Archer said, because the Trump-appointed judge reinstated him after he overturned the fraud conviction. Circuit Court Judge Ronnie Abrams, an Obama appointee, called it “an unwavering concern that Archer is innocent.”

Archer is “caught between two presidents,” his friends understand his predicament.

Interestingly, Arrow has a family relationship with former President Donald Trump that goes back three decades and is on good terms with him.

In January, after Trump played a round of golf with Kid Rock, Arrow happened to find him sitting next to the former president at the West Palm Beach Golf Course clubhouse.

Trump commented on Archer’s colorful golf outfit and the pair exchanged light banter before reminding him that they had met before.

Archer was 17 years old. In the summer of 1991, he and his family played a role in helping Donald Trump hide his relationship with his then-mistress, 26-year-old model-actress Marla Maples, on Long Island. Years later and they are the mother of their daughter, Tiffany Trump.

Maple’s manager at the time was Archer’s uncle, the legendary CAA executive Charles Melnyk. Whenever Maples came to Melnick’s Roslyn home, the teenage Archer was assigned to keep her busy playing tennis with her at the Jerlich Inn at Glen Head, driving around in his Jeep.

Call me Donald

He also sat in Trump’s limousine three times and called him “Donald” with the real estate developer at the time.

Melnyk’s widow, Denny Melnyk, recalled that Archer’s aunt “was beautiful.” She stayed with us on Long Island. . . We spend time with Marla because she doesn’t have a gig and to keep her away from the press and people who are bothering her.

“People didn’t think of her as good. [the Trump] The marriage was breaking up, but we were close to her and had a lot of exposure with Donald. He was very supportive and friendly and kind. [even] As his resources dwindled.

At the time, Melnick said, her father was dying and “Donald flew my father to Mar-a-Lago to see Jackie Mason. He was very generous and kind to my family, and he appreciated what we were doing for Marla.

When Archer bumped into Trump after golfing in January, he immediately called his aunt to say the former president fondly reminded her of her late husband.

“Devon is like a son to me,” she says. “He was a very natural suburban kid with zero opportunities. He was a lifeguard, an athlete and a hard worker. He did everything he could.”

The son of a teacher and a Vietnam veteran from Long Island, Archer, a former Abercrombie & Fitch model, won a lacrosse scholarship to Yale. There he befriended John Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz, who introduced him to Aden, with whom he opened the investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners.

Four years later, Archer was sentenced to one year and one month in prison and $43 million in bond fraud, which he said he did not know about.

He considers himself a victim of fraud, having lost his life savings.

That feeling of handshake

Still, if Judge Sullivan doesn’t have a change of heart, or if the appellants, Judge William J.

Hunter, listed as vice president of Burnham Financial Group, the company from which the fraudulent bonds were issued – and in In 2015 he was paid $155,000, according to documents on the laptop — he was never a suspect in the case and recused himself from Archer’s legal tirade.

In the year In 2019, after Archer complained to Hunter about his legal woes, Hunter assured him that he would not be abandoned by the Biden family.

“Every great family migrates . . . You are part of a great family – not on the sidelines, not abandoned by them even in your darkest moments. That’s how the Bidens differ, and you’re a Biden.

But any presidential pardon coming from the White House would likely only apply to Hunter, possibly during the lame-duck period of Joe’s presidency, at which point it would be too late for Arrow.