Devon Archer’s testimony Monday closes the circle on the Joe Biden Burisma scandal. It finishes what the FBI Confidential Source Memo started, giving us the inside scoop from both sides of the alleged bribery payoff.

We’ve long known the basics of Burisma and the Bidens:

1. Burisma was under criminal investigation from Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
2. Burisma needed the investigation … or Shokin … out of the way.
3. Joe Biden was Obama’s point man for Ukraine.
4. Burisma hired Joe’s son Hunter at $1 million a year salary … despite no energy expertise.
5. Burisma got what it wanted. Joe Biden got Shokin fired. He even bragged about it on video.

Watch 2018 Biden bragging about how he had threatened to withhold $1 Billion in congressionally approved funding to Ukraine unless the state prosecutor Viktor Shokin was fired.

Newly released documents appear to indicate he did this after receiving a $10 million bribe.

More:… pic.twitter.com/QymWftx8bS

— The Maine Wire (@TheMaineWire) July 21, 2023

Fox News’ Will Cain makes the valid point that this video is key. You’ve got the “quo” in Joe’s own words. A smoking gun with the “quid” pointed right at Joe’s own foot. 

This video is the smoking gun. Everything else is connecting the dots to this video.
1. The prosecutor Biden is demanding be fired is Viktor Shokin.
2. Shokin was investigating Ukrainian energy company Burisma for corruption.
3. Burisma put Hunter Biden on it’s board for 1M a…

— Will Cain (@willcain) July 31, 2023

Putting Us in Both Rooms

The confidential FBI source mentioned by Cain puts us on the Burisma side of the table. Mr. “Source” had been hired by Burisma to help the energy giant launch an Initial Public Offering in the U.S., an extremely lucrative move that was being blocked by a criminal investigation. Mr. “Source” quotes Burisma’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky as saying Hunter Biden was specifically hired for the Board so he, through his father, could make the Shokin problem go away.

In fact, Zlochevsky told Mr. “Source” that he paid $5 million each to Hunter and Joe to make it happen. The $10 million funneled through so many shell corporations and accounts it would take 10 years to unravel the money trail.

Devon Archer puts us on the Biden side of the table. It’s late 2015, Archer and Hunter are meeting with Zlochevsky and Burisma executive Vadym Pozharski. The Burisma executives are unhappy. Shokin is still hot on their case. They put the squeeze on Hunter. So far, they’re not getting their money’s worth. Hunter puts a “call to DC,” to his father, the Vice President of the United States, Obama’s man for Ukraine. “My guy,” as Hunter likes to say. “The Big Guy,” as Archer reportedly confirmed.

Democrat Rep. Don Goldman insists that Archer testified Joe only talked about niceties, “the weather,” during his chats with his son’s foreign business interests.

Rep. Jim Hines echoed the weather line on MSNBC Tuesday.

Rep. Jim Himes: Have the GOP pointed to anything that suggests Joe Biden engaged in corrupt behavior? No…he was on phone calls talking about the weather. pic.twitter.com/2DPsHHWo3y

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) August 1, 2023

Talk is cheap. What did Joe Biden do? As Mollie Hemingway notes, just five days after Hunter calls on behalf of Burisma, Biden’s giving a speech laying the ground work for dumping the prosecutor. A couple months later, VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN FORCES UKRAINE TO FIRE VIKTOR SHOKIN.  

Some weather. Joe summoned a wind so strong that it knocked Shokin out of office from thousands of miles away.

Contortions Galore

Biden’s defenders are saying, in essence, “Why, yes, Burisma poured millions into Hunter Biden to help do away with Shokin’s criminal investigation. Yes, the only way he could do that is through his father. Yes, his father got Shokin fired. But it’s preposterous to suggest Joe Biden did anything wrong. That there’s anything connecting Joe to Hunter’s Burisma dealings. He’s just a father who loves his son and didn’t want to be rude to his son’s foreign business associates.”

Does this make any sense?

We’ve been seeing some rather remarkable contortions by the media the past 24 hours. The New York Times,  CNN and others ran with the Archer testimony that Hunter was selling “the illusion” of access to his father. You know, the guy who says Hunter’s the smartest guy he knows, whom he talks to every day. The Vice President whom even Democrats acknowledge was on the horn with Hunter’s foreign business associates at least 20 times. And it bears constant repeating: Joe did precisely what Burisma was paying his son to arrange.

If that’s an illusion, I’m David Copperfield.

As Hemingway put it this morning, “What are the odds?”

Why would Joe Biden get on the phone with his business associates at all? Why would Barack Obama’s point man in Ukraine be talking to Ukrainian officials under suspicion of massive corruption who were paying large sums of money to his son? What was the point, exactly, if not as chairman of the family business?

MSNBC trotted another out another variation of the “Joe Loves His Son” angle Tuesday morning. Yeah, Hunter may have been selling the family name, but Joe wasn’t paying attention because his other son Beau was dying.

Biden wasn’t aware Hunter was selling his influence because he was sad that his eldest son was dying. pic.twitter.com/EFMWdA8tyk

— @amuse (@amuse) August 1, 2023

This one wasn’t made up entirely out of whole cloth. In 2019, former State Dept. official George Kent testified that he tried warning Joe Biden in 2015 that his son being on the board of Burisma could cause problems. However, Kent said that he was rebuffed by Biden staffers who told him the VP didn’t have the “bandwidth” to deal with Hunter because of Beau’s battle with cancer. 

This could carry a bit of weight except for two factors. First, according to the FBI’s credible source, Burisma said both Hunter and Joe were pushing for the company to put Hunter on their board. Second, examples of Biden family members cashing in on Joe Biden’s political office stretch back decades.

What Now?

Rep. Goldman — not coincidentally a chief lawyer in the impeachment of Donald Trump for trying to investigate Biden’s ties to Ukraine —  claims that Archer’s testimony shows Joe is as pure as the driven snow. “There is no evidence connecting President Biden to anything related to Hunter Biden,” he said, declaring in a separate interview, “This investigation must end now!”

On the other side, Rep. Anna Paulina-Luna. “I am done. I want this guy impeached. I have seen enough.”

The question is whether Speaker Kevin McCarthy will pull the trigger on an impeachment inquiry. Before Archer’s testimony McCarthy said, “As more of this continues to unravel it rises to the level of an impeachment inquiry.”

He made clear an inquiry is not impeachment. “It allows Congress to investigate by giving Congress the full power to get the information they need.”

After Archer’s testimony, McCarthy said: “Joe Biden lied about his involvement in his family’s corrupt business deals.  The big question is — what else is he trying to hide? House investigators are getting to the truth about Biden Inc.” However, McCarthy made no call for an impeachment inquiry.

Joe Biden lied about his involvement in his family’s corrupt business deals.
 
The big question is—what else is he trying to hide?
 
House investigators are getting to the truth about Biden Inc. https://t.co/Y9AQfy1sR5

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) July 31, 2023

With Congress now on its summer recess, it’s likely we won’t see any formal inquiry announced in the next few weeks, barring some brand new bombshell. But the investigation into Biden, Inc. and the DOJ’s role in protecting the racket continues. And the pressure mounts.

 

Al Perrotta is the Managing Editor of The Stream, chief barista for The Brew and co-author, with John Zmirak, of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration. You can follow him at @StreamingAl at GETTR, Gab, Parler, and now at TRUTH Social.