NEW YORK CITY – Devon Archer, former business partner of Hunter Biden, plans to appeal a sentence of a year and a day for his role in a $43 million fraud.
On March 7, his counsel Matthew Schwartz sent a letter to U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams asking to stay his surrender pending appeal.
“If Mr. Archer’s sentence is not stayed, then he may spend more time in prison than he should," Schwartz wrote.
He also asked Abrams not to impose a forfeiture of $15,700,513.
A stay would allow Archer to continue working for Jeffrey Cooper of Edwardsville, whose employees and son asked Abrams not to sentence him at all.
Jurors convicted Archer and others of taking money from a bond issue for the Wakpamni tribe of South Dakota and spending it on themselves.
Abrams vacated Archer’s conviction, finding he lacked intent.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed her and ordered her to sentence him.
She announced a sentence on Feb. 28, and entered judgment on March 7.
Schwartz claimed Archer’s appeal would raise at least five issues.
He claimed Abrams should have given jurors a multiple conspiracies charge.
“The evidence at trial was at least susceptible to the inference that there was more than one conspiracy,” he wrote.
He claimed Abrams should have severed Archer’s trial from that of John Galanis.
He claimed she should have suppressed electronic accounts that the government seized with impermissibly broad warrants.
He challenged the sufficiency of the evidence, claiming the law changed after the Second Circuit addressed the issue.
He challenged the sentence, claiming Abrams deferred to factual findings she found implicit in the verdict that went well beyond the elements of the crime.
He claimed Abrams could accept the verdict without finding that he necessarily knew of the scheme.