WASHINGTON – President Biden’s brother James has agreed to testify next month in the House impeachment inquiry into corruption allegations during Joe Biden’s time as Vice President.
Mr. James, 74, and his eldest son Hunter Biden, 53, have sparked Republican suspicions of spreading influence by involving powerful relatives in various foreign business relationships.
“James Biden will appear for a transcribed interview on February 21, 2024, and we look forward to his testimony,” the House Oversight Committee said. announced Wednesday.
Testimony is scheduled for just one week before Hunter’s Feb. 28 court appearance.
Republicans have criticized Joe Biden’s lucrative business venture with state-owned CEFC China Energy, which began paying him millions of dollars for unspecified services shortly after he left office as vice president in 2017. It is expected that he will harshly criticize Mr. James’s role.
James Biden has also been involved in efforts to court Mexico’s business elite, leveraging his brother’s political power while doing business while Joe was a prominent senator before becoming vice president in 2009. It is said that
The terms of James’ loan repayments to Joe Biden are also a key area of investigation as Congressional Republicans investigate whether the president personally profited from overseas business.
Hunter and James Biden shared $1 million transferred from a CEFC subsidiary in March 2017, and later received $10 million from threatening text messages Hunter sent to an employee based in China in July 2017. The company divided the $5.1 million transferred within days. He threatened to retaliate if the agreed deal was not reached.
Joe Biden met twice in May 2017 with Tony Bobulinski, the American partner in the CEFC deal, and in an October 2017 email that he was a participant in the CEFC’s attempt to purchase U.S. natural gas. It is said that his name was mentioned.
Joe Biden attended a meeting with about a dozen CEFC officials at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C., in or around March 2017. He spoke to impeachment investigators last week, including the firm’s chairman, Ye Jianming, who is missing in his home country amid corruption allegations from the Chinese government, and Rob Walker, a Biden family associate.
Bank records obtained by Congress show Joe Biden received payments of $40,000 and $200,000 from his brother, after James received the same amount weeks earlier from a law firm associated with the Biden family. Democrats claim these payments came from Joe Biden.
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said $40,000 transferred to Joe Biden’s bank account on September 3, 2017, came from “laundered” Chinese funds. he claimed.
According to bankruptcy filings, James Biden paid Joe Biden $200,000 on March 1, 2018, the same day James used his political connections to land investors in the Middle East. He reportedly received a $200,000 remittance from Amecore, a rural hospital company that was in financial trouble, with the promise that he would use it.
Intrigue has been tracking James Biden’s dealings for decades, dating back to his acquisition of failed investment bank Paradigm with Hunter in the early 2000s.
According to a 2021 book by Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger, James Biden predicted that Paradigm would succeed because “there are people all over the world who want to invest in Joe Biden.”
In 2006, Simmons Cooper, a law firm affiliated with wealthy asbestos lawyer Jeff Cooper, invested $1 million in the company, the same year Congress considered asbestos reform legislation.
Then Sen. Joe Biden played a pivotal role in blocking changes that could have limited funding for legal payments after lobbying by Cooper’s firm.
joe biden spokesperson Claimed in 2008 He claimed the money was not related to the bill and that the Biden family’s bank had repaid the investment.
Mr. Cooper later partnered with the Biden family on business activities in Mexico during the Obama-Biden administration, posing for a group photo with Mexican guests and Joe Biden at the Vice Presidential Palace in 2015, and attending an official visit to Mexico in 2016. I even rode on Air Force Two during my visit. Mexico.
James Biden’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his deposition.
