I hope y’all behaved while I was out. Now to the news —

Yesterday the House Overreach Committee had a closed-door hearing to interview Devon Archer, a former business associate of Hunter Biden. Today there are wildly different accounts of what Devon Archer said,

Per the Republicans, Devon Archer confirmed that President Biden was completely involved in Hunter Biden’s various business dealings and has been lying about that involvement all along. See, for example, committee chair James Comer’s statement on Archer’s testimony.

Per the Democrats, what Devon Archer confirmed is that Hunter Biden sold his access to Joe Biden as something of value he could exploit, but that access was an illusion. CNN:

Devon Archer told the House Oversight Committee on Monday that his former business partner, Hunter Biden, was selling the “illusion” of access to his father, according to a source familiar with the closed-door interview, the latest development in the Republican-led congressional investigations into the president’s son.

The source also reiterated that Archer provided no evidence connecting President Joe Biden to any of his son’s foreign business dealings.

This side of the story is saying that while Joe Biden sometimes did meet or spoke on the phone to Hunter’s business associates, when they did so they not discuss business. The New York Times:

President Biden met with and spoke to his son Hunter’s international business associates on a number of occasions over a decade as Hunter Biden sought to drum up consulting deals, including while his father was vice president, his former business partner told Congress on Monday.

However, in nearly five hours of closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee, Devon Archer, the former partner, asserted that the elder Mr. Biden was not party to any of his son’s business deals and that Hunter Biden had tried to sell the illusion that he was providing access to his powerful father when he was not, according to Democrats on the panel.

My impression is that Hunter did sometimes introduce people he was trying to impress to his father, when the opportunity arose. Archer’s testimony also suggested that sometimes Hunter would dial up his father during a business meeting and put him on speakerphone, but the conversation would be a brief “hey dad how’s it going?” thing, not a substantive discussion of business.

Democrats said that Mr. Archer had described the conversations in which the elder Mr. Biden participated as short and casual — about topics like the weather — and his interactions as little more than stopping by a dinner or a hotel for a brief handshake or a few pleasantries over the phone.

“The witness was very, very consistent that none of those conversations ever had to do with any business dealings or transactions,” said Representative Dan Goldman, Democrat of New York and a member of the Oversight Committee who participated in the interview. “They were purely what he called ‘casual conversation.’”

What I think happened: Hunter spent years putting his father in potentially incriminating situations, while Joe was trying to walk a very fine line between maintaining a relationship with his son without getting sucked into whatever the son was doing. And I assume Joe probably did have some idea what Hunter was up to, but that doesn’t mean he was  involved.

That paragraph above is way too much nuance for Republicans, of course. See also Philip Bump at WaPo, Another GOP ‘bombshell’ fails to detonate.  (No paywall.) Bump nicely debunks James Comer’s and Gym Jordan’s claims. None of that will stop certain House Republicans from demanding Joe Biden be impeached, of course.

In other news: Jack Smith’s J6 grand jury met today.