Instated by Appeals Court and Faces Prison Time
Posted at 7:45 pm on October 8, 2020 by Shipwreckedcrew
Quick hitter here to tee this story up for a more in-depth examination of the implications a little later.
Devon Archer has his conviction for securities fraud re-instated by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Archer and two others were convicted by a jury on June 28, 2018, in the Southern District of New York. On November 15, 2018, the trial judge affirmed the convictions of the other two defendants, but vacated the conviction as to Archer, and granted him a new trial. The government appealed that decision.
Oral arguments on the appeal took place on November 8, 2019 — 11 months ago. The Second Circuit issued its decision yesterday, reversing the trial judge’s order for a new trial, and reinstating Archer’s conviction on all counts by the jury.
So, some might be wondering, “Who is Devon Archer?”
Devon Archer is a long-time family friend of the Heinz family in Pennsylvania — the very wealthy family into which John Kerry managed to get his gold-digging fingers when he married Theresa Heinz, the widow of former Pennsylvania Senator John Heinz, who was killed in a plane crash in 1991.
John Kerry became step-father to Christopher Heinz when he married Christopher’s mother. Devon Archer was Christopher Heinz’s roommate at Yale. Archer was also co-founder of private-equity firm Rosemont Capital with Christopher Heinz, starting their operation with money from the Rosemont Foundation, the investment arm of the Heinz family fortune. Archer served as senior adviser to John Kerry during his 2004 presidential bid.
But most importantly for our purposes here, Archer, Heinz, and Hunter Biden were the three founding partners of Rosemont Seneca Partners, and it was Archer who arranged for Hunter Biden to join the Board of Directors of Burisma Holdings, the owner of the largest private natural gas company in Ukraine. Archer and Biden were also partners in the investments in China made through Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a vehicle created by them for that purpose, and largely funded with money from various Chinese state-owned banks and other financial institutions — all controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Devon Archer has been joined at the hip with Hunter Biden just about every step of the way in their travels and investments that hang around the neck of Joe Biden.
The securities fraud case that led to Archer’s conviction occurred during the time frame of 2014-15 and involved in some ways the Rosemont Seneca entities. I’m not going to detail the fraud scheme here — I’ll save that for a later story — but Archer involved himself with some quite sketchy Wall Street operators with dubious pasts.
The federal court judge who presided over the trial vacated Archer’s conviction and granted him a new trial based on her view of the evidence that it wasn’t clear Archer was aware of the fraudulent manipulations being undertaken by his business partners in a not-too-complicated bond issuance on behalf of a New York Indian Tribe. She held that Archer’s actions were consistent with someone under the impression that the bond offering was legitimate, and he was only asked to do things that would be done in the ordinary course of such an undertaking.
The trial judge is a familiar individual if you’ve been paying attention to various anti-Trump efforts by the Democrats and the media — District Judge Ronnie Abrams.
Judge Abrams is the daughter of high profile New York First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, the brother of noted television personality Dan Abrams, AND MOST INTERESTINGLY the wife of Mueller Special Counsel prosecutor Greg Andres. She was appointed by Pres. Obama in 2011.
I’m beyond giving anyone connected to the Obama Justice Department or the Special Counsel’s Office the benefit of the doubt on matters involving Pres. Trump. Andres had been a Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Obama DOJ Criminal Division in 2010-12.
The Mueller SCO was in full swing from June 2018 to November 2018, when Judge Abrams was thinking about, and ultimately decided to take Devon Archer off the hook and eliminate any incentive he might have to cooperate with the Trump Justice Department. The Second Circuit opinion is quite “dismissive” of the rationale she offered for doing so in her written opinion. They remanded the case back to the district court for sentencing. That’s where things might get interesting.
One of the other two defendants who went to trial and was convicted was sentenced to 10 years in prison by Judge Abrams. The amount of the fraud was set at over $40 million.
Devon Archer is looking at a very long term of incarceration in federal prison. When Judge Abrams vacated his conviction in November 2018, he was not having to sit in jail while his case was appealed.
He’s in a very different place now when it comes to the threat to his liberty in the very near future. He can gamble that Joe Biden might win the election, and a Biden Justice Department MIGHT take his “history” into consideration in how to deal with his case going forward.
Or he can take his chances now with a Trump Administration, chances which would likely evaporate in about 30 days if Trump wins re-election and his Hunter Biden information is of little or no importance.
Will the issue stay with the SDNY, or will DOJ step in and take over discussions regarding cooperation with Archer?
Am I advocating for the use of the means and mechanisms of DOJ for the political benefit of Pres. Trump? What have the Democrats done in the past four years that would cause me to lose sleep over that?
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