The former business partner of Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, has not spent time in prison despite being convicted almost four years ago of securities fraud.
Although Archer faces one year and one day in prison and was ordered to pay financial penalties of $15 million and over $43 million in restitution last month, his attorneys are attempting to appeal and postpone his sentence, arguing that Archer's sentence and monetary penalties are too harsh since he might not have known the full extent of the crime, according to Just the News.
Archer and two co-defendants were found guilty in 2018 of using a bond scheme to defraud an impoverished American Indian tribe of $60 million.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan, however, told the trial judge Monday that Archer's arguments for appealing and postponing the sentence have no merit, saying that "Archer falls far short of meeting his burden of establishing the necessary 'substantial question of law or fact' to justify bail pending appeal or a stay of forfeiture."
The prosecutors stated that Archer knew about the bond issuances, used his own money to buy $15 million worth of bonds, and furthered the scheme by making "varied lies to banks" and his corporate board.
"It would make no sense to find that he knew about only one aspect of the scheme," the prosecutors argued. "Archer's guilt having already been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the Court was then bound by the evidence – not the jury's verdict – to find that the entirety of the scheme was foreseeable to Archer," the prosecutors added, and stated that, "[I]n short, the defendant's motion for a stay should be denied."
Archer previously served with Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company.