Devon Archer (l) and Jason Galanis were involved in the scheme to steal from a Native American tribe in South Dakota. (Credit: Burisma Holdings /Twitter)
“Devon Archer has his conviction for securities fraud re-instated by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Archer and two others were convicted by a jury on June 28, 2018, in the Southern District of New York. On November 15, 2018, the trial judge affirmed the convictions of the other two defendants, but vacated the conviction as to Archer, and granted him a new trial. The government appealed that decision.
Oral arguments on the appeal took place on November 8, 2019 — 11 months ago. The Second Circuit issued its decision yesterday, reversing the trial judge’s order for a new trial, and reinstating Archer’s conviction on all counts by the jury.
(…) The securities fraud case that led to Archer’s conviction occurred during the time frame of 2014-15 and involved in some ways the Rosemont Seneca entities. I’m not going to detail the fraud scheme here — I’ll save that for a later story — but Archer involved himself with some quite sketchy Wall Street operators with dubious pasts.
The federal court judge who presided over the trial vacated Archer’s conviction and granted him a new trial based on her view of the evidence that it wasn’t clear Archer was aware of the fraudulent manipulations being undertaken by his business partners in a not-too-complicated bond issuance on behalf of a New York Indian Tribe. She held that Archer’s actions were consistent with someone under the impression that the bond offering was legitimate, and he was only asked to do things that would be done in the ordinary course of such an undertaking.
The trial judge is a familiar individual if you’ve been paying attention to various anti-Trump efforts by the Democrats and the media — District Judge Ronnie Abrams.
Judge Abrams is the daughter of high profile New York First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, the brother of noted television personality Dan Abrams, AND MOST INTERESTINGLY the wife of Mueller Special Counsel prosecutor Greg Andres. She was appointed by Pres. Obama in 2011. (Read more: RedState, 10/08/2020) (Archive)