Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer sold then-Vice President Joe Biden’s official April 2014 visit to Ukraine — and the contents of a speech he delivered while there — as evidence of their influence and value to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, according to emails obtained by the House Oversight Committee.

Writing to Archer ahead of his father’s scheduled visit to Ukraine, Hunter argued that they should characterize the trip as the result of their influence in conversations with Burisma executives who would, days after the emails were exchanged, appoint each of them to the company’s board at a rate of $83,000 per month each. Not wanting to set expectations too high, Hunter stipulated that they should make sure their Burisma colleagues understood that they did not have direct control over the vice president’s actions or speech.

“The announcement of my guy’s upcoming travels should be characterized as part of our advice and thinking — but what he will say and do is out of our hands,” the younger Biden wrote to Archer, referring to his father. “In other words, it could be a really good thing or it could end up creating too great an expectation. We need to temper expectations regarding that visit.”

On April 16, two days after the email was sent and roughly one week before then-Vice President Biden left for his trip to Ukraine, Archer and Hunter met with the vice president at the White House, the Senate Homeland Committee revealed in a report on Biden-family corruption.

One week later, on April 22, Hunter emailed Archer comments that his father had made that day while addressing Ukrainian presidential candidates and legislators in Kyiv.

“Imagine where’d you be today if you were able to tell Russia: Keep your gas. It would be a very different world you’d be facing today,” Biden said during the Kyiv speech, in comments Hunter shared with Archer. “It takes some difficult decisions but it’s collectively in your power and the power of Europe and the United States. And we stand ready to assist you in reaching that.”

Archer responded excitedly to Hunter’s email, telling the younger Biden that his father’s remarks would drive home just how integral Burisma was to Ukraine’s domestic political stability, alluding to the fact that Burisma was well positioned to help cushion the blow should Russia cut off gas exports to Ukraine.

“Wow. We need to make sure this rag tag temporary Government in the Ukraine understands the value of Burisma to its very existence,” Archer wrote. Burisma executives clearly received the message: They announced Archer’s appointment to its board on April 22, the very day Archer sent his email, to be followed several weeks later by the announcement of Hunter’s appointment.

Wanting to ensure that Burisma executives were aware of his father’s remarks, Hunter then told Archer, “you should send to Vadym,” referencing Vadim Pojarskii, the then-CFO of Burisma.

Asked to interpret the email during his testimony this week before the House Oversight Committee, Archer confirmed that Hunter was seeking “credit” for the then-vice president’s trip and the message he delivered to Ukrainian lawmakers.

“He’s saying that, you know, we can’t — I can’t guide my guy, you know, I can’t guide my father in what he’s going to do on this trip, but let’s get credit for it,” Archer said, according to a transcript of his testimony. “I think that’s what it’s saying here.”

“He was getting paid a lot of money, and I think, you know, he wanted to show value,” Archer added.

Biden’s trip to Kyiv came shortly after Russian proxies invaded Eastern Ukraine. Then-Vice President Biden’s emphasis on Ukrainian energy independence would have been welcome by Burisma executives who stood to benefit if Ukraine weaned itself off of Russian gas and turned to alternative sources that Burisma, which was then working on expanding its drilling assets in Kazakhstan, could provide.

Asked during his testimony what “value” he and Hunter provided to Burisma, Archer responded that their value was in offering access to the “brand,” which he later conceded amounted to the Biden family and specifically Joe Biden himself, according to a transcript of the testimony released Thursday.

Russian aggression provided what Hunter and Archer clearly believed was an opportunity to cash in on their access to the Biden “brand.”

A lengthy email that Hunter sent to Archer several weeks ahead of his father’s Ukraine trip sheds light on the opportunity Hunter had identified. In the email, Hunter forecasts how instability in the region could affect energy markets and predicts an opportunity for Burisma to build political goodwill by stepping up to offset the energy shortage caused by hostilities with Russia.

“There will be enormous pressure on Burisma to lower prices for the national good,” Hunter writes. “Even if the company takes a hit in profits it would seem imprudent to raise prices in convert [sic] with RU price gouging. Burisma has an opportunity here to play the hero if it ignores the artificial market value of their product and plays to the national interest, Kazakstan could play a pivotal role by providing gas at rates lower than what the RUs are asking but I doubt they would want to poke the Bear.”

Burisma needed all the goodwill it could muster. Its founder Mykola "Nikolai" Zlochevsky had been identified as one of the many faces of Ukrainian corruption by the Obama State Department, his assets in London were days away from being seized by the U.K. government, and he was on his way to being officially investigated by Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Shokin.

In addition to urging domestic-energy independence, Biden told Ukrainian lawmakers during his speech in Kyiv that they needed to crack down on endemic political corruption in their country if they wanted to rely on U.S. support in the fight against Russian aggression.

"To be very blunt about it . . . you have to fight the cancer of corruption," he said.

At the time Biden delivered his speech, Hunter was working with his Burisma colleagues to ensure that Ukrainian efforts to root out the “cancer of corruption” did not touch Zlochevsky. Less than a moth after Biden’s Kyiv speech, on May 14, Hunter was appointed to the Burisma board, joining Archer. That very day Pojarskii, the Burisma CFO, sent an email to the pair requesting assistance with the “urgent issue” of Zlochevsky’s legal troubles.

“We urgently need your advice on how you could use your inﬂuence to convey amessage / signal, etc .to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions,” Pojarskii wrote.

As Zlochevsky’s legal troubles mounted, Burisma executives became concerned that the perception of corruption would prevent the company from cashing in on a U.S. IPO. When the concern was raised in a meeting, Zlochevsky, the Burisma CEO, replied something to the effect of, "Don't worry Hunter will take care of all of those Issues through his dad," a businessman who attended the meeting told the FBI, according to a record of the FBI’s interview with the informant released by Senator Chuck Grassley.

During his next trip to Ukraine, in late-2015, then-Vice President Biden threatened then-Ukrainian president Poroshenko that the Obama administration would withhold $1 billion in congressionally approved U.S. funding unless Kyiv fired Shokin. Biden later bragged about the threat in a 2018 interview at the Council on Foreign Relations.