Aug. 2, 2023 - The Tucker Carlson Show
11:24
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| So you worked with Hunter Biden in a bunch of different businesses. | ||
| What were the specific skills that he brought to clients? | ||
| Well, at the end of the day, he had a career in Washington, graduated Yale Law School, and had a very big network in D.C. and brought that know-how and understanding of D.C. and ultimately the Biden brand. | ||
| The know-how. | ||
| So as far as I can tell, he wasn't doing legal work. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| He wasn't in the counsel's office at Burisma, right? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| The network and the Biden brand sounds like the kind of key component of what he was bringing. | ||
| Do you think that he would have been in those businesses, not having a business background, without his father being in a government position? | ||
| It's hard to speculate in those regards. | ||
| I think when we initially met and he talked about his advisory business, his business that... | ||
| Needed to transition from lobbying to advisory and the interest in private equity. | ||
| It seemed, you know, it seemed like a new and interesting network for us to expand our business. | ||
| Whether he could have, you know, been in that position, it's hard for me to speculate. | ||
| But obviously, the brand of Biden, you know, adds a lot of power when you're a vice president. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| And there was a time, maybe 10 years ago, when private equity, maybe like AI now, was just one of those terms people were throwing out, I'm in private equity! | ||
| But the mechanics, having done it, coming from a business background yourself, are kind of complex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Absolutely. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, it's a complex business. | ||
| It takes years of training. | ||
| But again, the initial idea around the business is that they were going to provide the government insight and an additional network to raise capital and then deal with regulatory issues that you might have at the corporate level. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Regulatory issues. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So that would be more his area. | ||
| That would be his space. | ||
| But did he have a... | ||
| A sophisticated understanding of regulation, do you think? | ||
| I think that he led a team that had a sophisticated... | ||
| Okay! | ||
| Because I lived in Washington a long time around a lot of regulation. | ||
| Also a very complex area. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I think you've got to be an expert in knowing the guy, and he was the guy that was the expert in knowing the guy. | ||
| He was an expert in knowing the guy. | ||
| And who was the guy he knew? | ||
| Well, he knew a lot of people, but obviously there was some familiar, you know, his brother, his father, some of his father's siblings. | ||
| So he knew a lot of people. | ||
| And obviously I know you're pointing to, you know, the father being the key relationship. | ||
| Well, no, I'm just trying to get a sense of, Washington's not a money town. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, people aren't in business in Washington for the most part. | ||
| And most people don't have business skills that I noticed in 30 years of living there. | ||
| So really, the business of Washington is selling access. | ||
| That's what it looked like to me. | ||
| Not just under Biden, but that's what people do. | ||
| I think that's one of the core misconceptions. | ||
| It seems like understanding a regulatory environment means selling access at the end of the day. | ||
| That's how I interpret it. | ||
| And I think that's how most people on Wall Street, whether they admit it or not, interpret it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So we've got a complex business that intersects with government. | ||
| We need a guy who knows a guy. | ||
| How do I deal with getting a guy a visa that needs to come over for a business deal? | ||
| Call our lobbyist that knows the guy in DHS or used to work in DHS or in Customs Border Patrol or the people at the embassy in state. | ||
| They might be able to help. | ||
| So there are very tactical elements that are regulatory and compliance and governance that you have to go through. | ||
| And you've got to know the guy that worked at the old agency that now has a lobbying firm that can go back to the agency. | ||
| You know, get things put to the front of the line. | ||
| So the reason I'm asking this is because, it's not to give the Bidens a pass, hardly, but when people say, well, there's some question about whether Hunter was trading on his father's name, if you live in Washington, like, that's the whole city right there. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I think you know the answer to that. | ||
| At the end of the day, he had the best advantage to do that because of where he was. | ||
| And, you know, we thought that when we went into business, this was a great opportunity for us. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| And you're not the only one who did that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And Hunter Biden is not the only son of a famous government official who's done this, right? | ||
| At all. | ||
| But I just wonder, like, when you hear people say, well, it's kind of an open question about why they hired Hunter Biden. | ||
| Like, that's pretty disingenuous, no? | ||
| Right. | ||
| I think at the end of it, so when you look at the whole, there are people that maybe were, you know, sons or relatives or brother-in-laws of other high-ranking officials. | ||
| But I think what we ran into and... | ||
| With what Hunter ran to, it was almost like an Icarus issue. | ||
| So he got a little, it was too close to the sun. | ||
| It was too good to be true. | ||
| And the connections were too close and the scrutiny too much. | ||
| And it ended up destroying, you know, it left the wake of a lot of destruction in businesses over a number of years. | ||
| So how many, it's been reported in, you have said that there were occasions when Joe Biden would call in with clients present on a speakerphone. | ||
| Right. | ||
| How many times do you think that happened? | ||
| I mean, over a 10-year partnership, the number I'm going with is 20. That's probably the amount that I kind of recollect. | ||
| So a lot. | ||
| Yeah, a lot, you could say. | ||
| So Joe Biden, who is very much a product of Washington, of course must have known that he was calling in to effectively a business meeting that his son was having. | ||
| I mean, he must have understood that that was kind of what his son was selling. | ||
| Well, that's, I mean, it's hard for me to speculate on that. | ||
| But like, I guess my question, just to keep it to the facts, Joe Biden, then the sitting vice president, knew that there were Hunter's business associates in the room. | ||
| Yeah, I think I can definitively say at particular dinners or meetings, he knew there were business associates and he, you know, we, or if I was there, I was a business associate too. | ||
| So I think, or if any of the other colleagues from the D.C. office or the New York office were there. | ||
| So yeah, at times there were. | ||
| To be completely clear on the calls, I don't know if it was an orchestrated call-in or not. | ||
| It certainly was powerful, though, because if you're sitting with a foreign business person and you hear the vice president's voice, that's prize enough. | ||
| I mean, that's pretty impactful stuff for anyone in the world. | ||
| It's been reported, and I know that it is true, that Hunter and his brother were very close to their dad. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Which I think is great. | ||
| I've got a lot of kids. | ||
| I'm very close to them. | ||
| Talk to them every day. | ||
| Never called them on speaker during a business meeting. | ||
| That's weird. | ||
| You've got a lot of kids. | ||
| You're close to them. | ||
| Do you call them on speaker during business meetings? | ||
| Do I call them? | ||
| I mean, what is that? | ||
| A grown man calling his dad on a speakerphone? | ||
| During a business meeting... | ||
| Right, and to be clear, sometimes the call was coming in and the speaker would go on. | ||
| So it's just the presence. | ||
| You have to be... | ||
| I mean, you understand DC, right? | ||
| So the power to have that access and that conversation, and it's not in a scheduled conference call and it's a part of your family, that's... | ||
| That's like the pinnacle of power in D.C. 100%. | ||
| I guess I'm pivoting against the lie that I'm hearing people tell with a straight face, Congressman Goldman, for example, that we don't really know what was going on. | ||
| Really? | ||
| You're taking a call from the vice president and you put it on speaker. | ||
| It's not just, hey, dad, I'm in a meeting with some buddies. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's, let me put my dad, the vice president, on speaker. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| In the rear view, it's an abuse of soft power, I'd say. | ||
| An abuse of soft power. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| When did you meet Joe Biden? | ||
| Joe Biden I met the first time probably at the 2000 convention. | ||
| I think it was in L.A. and then Boston was 2004. So those two times I probably shook hands as they made kind of the power circles around the, you've been to them, through the skyboxes. | ||
| Following that, really when our partnership started in 2008, 2009-ish, conversation started, that's when I re-met Hunter and actually had a sit-down and a meal with him, talked about the transition from lobbying into strategic advisory and then some type of coalescence around having a private equity fund that would have this unique access and understanding of a regulatory environment in DC. Again, got it. | ||
| To be clear. | ||
| How many times do you think you met Joe Biden during the course of your relationship with Hunter? | ||
| How many times? | ||
| I should have this off the top of my head since I've been asked so many times. | ||
| Probably, same thing, 20. So I got one last question for you, and we'll do a much longer interview and get the entire story. | ||
| But we found this letter kind of amazing. | ||
| It's from January 20th, 2011, which I think puts you in your late 30s, mid to late 30s. | ||
| So you're a younger man. | ||
| This is from the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, to you personally, and it's personalized here at the bottom. | ||
| Devin Archer, Rosemont Seneca Partners. | ||
| That was your partnership with Hunter Biden in Georgetown. | ||
| Dear Devin, I apologize for not getting a chance to talk to you at the luncheon yesterday. | ||
| I was having trouble getting away from hosting President Hu. | ||
| Hu Xintang, who was running China at that point. | ||
| I hope I get a chance to see you again soon with Hunter. | ||
| I hope you enjoyed lunch. | ||
| Thanks for coming. | ||
| Sincerely, Joseph R. Biden Jr. P.S. Handwritten. | ||
| Happy you guys are together. | ||
| So there are many levels here. | ||
| But here's the Vice President of the United States saying to you, a man in his mid-30s, who's not a government official, I'm sorry I was occupied with the guy who runs the world's largest country. | ||
| I would much rather talk to you and thank you. | ||
| What was he thanking you for? | ||
| Well... | ||
| First of all, it's a lovely letter. | ||
| It's quite enthusiastic. | ||
| It's a little weird, though, right? | ||
| Listen, it was kind of the beginning of our partnership, and he was thanking me and thanking Hunter, I think, at the end of the day for bringing this idea of this government regulatory strategic advisory business into the private equity world. | ||
| And I think he was excited about the prospects for Hunter, and he was just thanking me. | ||
| I think it was a nice gesture. | ||
| It was a nice show. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| Very polite. | ||
| It gets a 10 on the etiquette scale. | ||
| But he's a vice president of the United States, and he's talking about foreign business deals with you and thanking you for that. | ||
| I think, again, it goes back to my earlier point. | ||
| Yeah, I think I hit, at the time, I think I hit the jackpot in finding the regulatory environment or company that can navigate right to the top. | ||
| Obviously, as time was told, being a little bit too close to the sun ends up burning you. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| And it did you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| And you suffered greatly for it. | ||
| And this is not a criticism of you. | ||
| I would think as a business guy, you use every advantage. | ||
| These are not business guys. | ||
| This is the Vice President of the United States. | ||
| He's not allowed to be working on businesses with foreign governments while he's Vice President. | ||
| I don't think. | ||
| Not that I know of. | ||
| But here he is! | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Amazing. | |
| We'll be back. | ||
| Devon Archer, thank you. |
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