While speaking on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday morning, Rep. James Comer made some intriguing announcements.
Within the discussion, Bartiromo displayed a letter the DOJ had addressed to the magistrate overseeing Devon Archer’s criminal case. It asked for a deadline for his surrender so he could go to prison.
Comer and Bartiromo immediately brought out the peculiar timing since Archer is scheduled to testify before House investigators on Monday (today).
Here’s the transcript of their discussion:
Bartiromo: By the way, Devon Archer is testifying on Monday. Do you ever see – you usually see – the DOJ send letters like this out on a Saturday?
Comer: Never, never. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of the Department of Justice doing anything on a Saturday.
Bartiromo: So what is this letter? Can you walk us through it? The government is apprising the court of the status of Devon Archer’s appeal of his judgment of conviction, and they request that the court set a surrender date for the defendant to report to a facility. Please walk us through what this letter says.
Comer: Yeah, the letter from the Department of Justice is trying to nudge the judge to go ahead and sentence Devon Archer for something unrelated to what we’re going to be talking to him about tomorrow. It’s odd that it was issued on a Saturday, and it’s odd that it’s right before he’s scheduled to come in to have an opportunity to speak in front of the House Oversight Committee and tell the American people the truth about what really went on with Burisma.
So, you know, I don’t know if this is a coincidence, Maria, or this is another example of the weaponization of the Department of Justice, but I can tell you this: The lengths to which the Biden legal team has gone to try to intimidate our witnesses, to coordinate with the Department of Justice, and to certainly coordinate with the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, to encourage people not to cooperate with our investigation, to encourage banks not to turn over bank records, to encourage Treasury not to let us have access to those Suspicious Activity Reports – it’s very troubling.
And I believe that this is another violation of the law. This is obstruction of justice. But nevertheless, we’re going to continue to move forward and try to present the American people with the facts and the truth about this president and his family.
It’s uncommon for the DOJ to utilize this type of procedural action on a weekend, as Comer points out. Is it really a coincidence that the federal government is now attempting to expedite Archer’s detention on unconnected charges mere days before he is scheduled to give a testimony? At this moment, nobody can determine for sure, but considering that he had lost his appeal almost two months before, that’s a fairly large coincidence.
Suggestions that the DOJ is attempting to prevent Archer from indefinitely collaborating with the House inquiry into the Bidens certainly appear plausible. It’s quite improbable that the judge will take an absurd action to stop his testimony on Monday. But if he has to report to prison shortly thereafter, that would seriously impair House investigators’ ability to continue interviewing him in the future.
Given the difficulty of the scenario, Comer and other members of Congress will be hard-pressed to learn all Archer is aware of in a single interview. Initial responses will need to be verified with more proof, which will likely prompt further, more in-depth inquiry. Ignore the possibility that making such a request to the DOJ before speaking with House investigators could be interpreted as intimidation. Comer went so far as to allege that justice is being obstructed in the conversation with Bartiromo.
Comer vowed to continue nonetheless, and the letter delivered on Saturday will surely just motivate House investigators to go even further in the limited time they have.
The government is requesting that the judge establish a deadline for him to surrender. Archer’s lawyer disagrees since he claims they will continue to appeal (therefore Archer should be allowed to be out at this period). Another issue about punishment has also been brought forward by Archer’s attorney.
Given the time, it may still have been an attempt to intimidate, but they’re not truly going to lock him up tomorrow, contrary to what some people were suggesting. The government and Archer’s lawyer are still in communication. The court in the case will decide whether or not the changeover will take place right away, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Now that Devon Archer’s lawyer, Matthew Schwartz, has commented, it’s intriguing to hear what Archer thinks about the letter.
Schwartz stated that they were cognizant of the rumors that the Biden administration was attempting to intimidate Archer with the letter.
In the words of Schwartz, “Archer does not agree with that speculation. In any case, Mr. Archer will do what he has planned to all along, which is to show up on Monday, and to honestly answer the questions that are put to him by the Congressional investigators.”
From Devon Archer attorney Matthew L. Schwartz: pic.twitter.com/z6WvbPJYeL
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) July 30, 2023
The post Devon Archer’s Attorney Releases Statement About DOJ ‘Intimidation’ Letter appeared first on The Republic Brief.
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