As Hunter Biden’s legal and public relations strategy takes an even more pugilistic turn, one of his attorneys is now telling members of Congress that they cannot trust the word of a former Biden business associate, Devon Archer, whom the first son’s team is now referring to as “an inmate.” Archer and Mr. Biden were close friends and partners in international business affairs for years. 

In a letter sent to the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday announcing the first son would publicly testify, Mr. Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, describes Archer as “an inmate convicted for his involvement in a tribal bond scheme that never involved Hunter.” 

Archer was sentenced last year to one year and one day in federal prison for defrauding a Native American tribe in a scheme involving $60 million in bonds. His conviction was overturned on appeal, then reinstated after prosecutors pushed back. Archer, who argues he lost money on the tribal venture and was guilty only of making foolish mistakes, has appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court. 

Archer has yet to report to prison, a spokesman for the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York tells the Sun, meaning he is not “an inmate,” as Mr. Lowell suggests. An attorney for Archer did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Archer and Mr. Biden were close friends for years after first meeting through the stepson of Secretary Kerry, Chris Heinz, who was roommates with Archer at Yale. Mr. Biden was also studying at the university’s law school, having transferred to the program from the Georgetown University Law Center. 

Messrs. Biden, Heinz, and Archer launched a decades-long, lucrative partnership that traded on the familial connections of Messrs. Heinz and Biden. The partnership would eventually land Archer and Mr. Biden on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, which paid them millions of dollars. Mr. Heinz, who is an heir to the food processing fortune, exited the partnership when the bad optics became a liability.

Mr. Biden’s derogation of Archer to “inmate” is a quick turnaround for the first son, who previously described Archer as a member of his “persecuted” family. According to Miranda Devine’s book, “Laptop from Hell,” data retrieved from Mr. Biden’s abandoned laptop disclosed that Archer texted Mr. Biden in March 2019 to vent his frustrations about the prosecution. 

“Why did your dad’s administration appointees arrest me and try and put me in jail?” Archer asked. “Why would they try and ruin my family and destroy my kids and no one from your family’s side step in and at least try to help me?” He was indicted during President Biden’s second term as vice president in 2016. 

The first son replied to Archer that his father had no control over such prosecutions. “There’s no connection between the two, the same the justice department can investigate and prosecute this president and his family it does for all administrations. It’s democracy,” he wrote. “Three co equal branches of government.”

Yet Mr. Biden then assured him that he was a part of the family. “Every big family is persecuted. … You are part of a great family — not a sideshow, not abandoned by them even in their worst moments,” he responded. “That’s the way Bidens are different, and you are a Biden.”

Archer previously testified behind closed doors to the Oversight Committee about his relationships with the Biden family and their overseas business dealings. He told members of the committee that his lucrative partnership with the first son relied on Mr. Biden leveraging the family “brand” and the “illusion” of access to his father. He also told investigators that the then-vice president had joined phone calls with his son’s business partners on at least 20 occasions, but noted that he never personally heard the two men discuss business during those phone calls. 

Archer later told Tucker Carlson, in an interview this summer, that the two men had been hired to serve on the Burisma board for no other reason than Mr. Biden’s connections to the highest levels of American politics. The first son’s role was to help manage the company’s international troubles, mostly dealing with American government officials. “That ability to help on the geopolitical stage, keep them out of trouble, keep them out of investigations, unfreeze assets” was the major — if only — benefit Mr. Biden brought to the table, Archer said. 

He also told Mr. Carlson that he believes his legal travails — being sent to prison over a bad business deal which lost him money – were brought about due to scrutiny he came under from Mr. Biden’s enemies.

“The trajectory of my life would’ve been far different, and arguably far better, if I never met” Mr. Biden, Archer said.