We originally were going to offer some suggested questions for former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer in advance of his testimony this week, but the only question for right now is, “All right, Mr. Archer --- do we have to hog-tie you and physically drag you in to testify, or what?”

Archer has canceled on the committee, again.  This is the third time.  Oversight Chairman James Comer has already subpoenaed him, so he’s wondering, “Now what?”  This coming week is the last one before the August recess, so he’s still trying to get Archer to come in.  Personally, we think he should go with the hog-tying idea.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/devon-archer-has-canceled-his-deposition-three-times

Here’s what we found on the ability of Congress to compel testimony.  They could try to jail him for contempt of Congress, but this DOJ will undoubtedly not support them in that fight and will probably do everything in their power to thwart the committee.  Still, try anyway!

https://classroom.synonym.com/limitations-power-congress-call-testimony-7927.html

In the meantime, if you could use a refresher/catch-up on what we know about the whistleblower testimony from last week surrounding the FBI’s interview of a confidential human source (CHS), the U.K. DAILY MAIL has an excellent one.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12322067/Trusted-informants-claim-Joe-Hunter-Biden-bribed-10million-corrupt-Ukrainian-oligarch-CORROBORATED-FBI.html

This piece also helps clarify the role then-Attorney General Bill Barr played in opening that investigation and how the 2020 interview enshrined in that “1023” came to be.  As a source familiar with the investigation explained it to the DAILY MAIL, Barr chose to split the Hunter case into two different parts, giving Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss the responsibility of a tax and money laundering probe, and tasking U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania Scott Brady with vetting and investigating allegations of international corruption and illegal foreign lobbying, among other potential crimes.

The DAILY MAIL source explained how his FBI colleagues were digging through their records at the request of Brady’s office and found a 2017 interview of a very trusted, dependable FBI confidential source that mentioned Hunter and the notoriously corrupt Burisma energy firm.  The interview had been done by “a West Coast-based agent.”

The DAILY MAIL source told them there was “a fight for a month” to get the go-ahead to re-interview this CHS, but when they finally got the report back from that, in June 2020, they thought, “Holy smokes, this is something.”

This was the report Chuck Grassley recently obtained, the one that said Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky had told the CHS he had to pay Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each to make a Ukrainian criminal investigation of him and his company go away.  (Recall that lead prosecutor Viktor Slokin was subsequently fired, and President Biden later publicly bragged about threatening to withhold aid to Ukraine unless that happened.)  The CHS also told the FBI that Zlochevsky had remarked he’d had to keep Hunter on the Burisma board even though “his [Zlochevsky’s] dog was smarter.”

Gary Shapley, the lead IRS agent-turned-whistleblower in the case, told the House Ways & Means Committee in sworn testimony that Weiss never shared the information in this “1023” with his team.  The source for the DAILY MAIL said he believes this is because Weiss’s prosecution team was reluctant to embroil then-presidential candidate Joe Biden in a criminal investigation because of the “political sensitivity.”

“They were scared of their own shadows,” the source said.  “They were so worried about what they were doing and the sensitivity of it.  This was an election year and there were a lot of eyes on it.”

The DAILY MAIL source corroborated what the whistleblowers said last week about Weiss having enough evidence to charge Hunter of tax crimes in 2019, before restrictive DOJ policies kicked in during the 2020 election year, and found his failure to do so “inexplicable.”

Oh, are they not supposed to be targeting political candidates during an election year?  Tell that to prosecutors who have charged lead GOP candidate Donald Trump and are scheduling trials in prime campaign season next year.  Somehow this election interference is...different.