WASHINGTON — First brother James Biden arrived Wednesday morning for a deposition in the House impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s role in the family business.
Mr. James, 74, did not speak to reporters when he arrived at the O’Neill House office building ahead of what is expected to be a marathon private interview.
Republicans leading the investigation are demanding answers from James about his powerful brother’s alleged role in the Biden family’s partnership with state-owned CEFC China Energy, which also involved his eldest son Hunter Biden, who is scheduled to testify next week. It appears to be approaching.
Hunter and James Biden were first provided with more than $1 million in funding in March 2017, shortly after Joe Biden met with CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming, but in 2015 when Biden was still vice president. It was a “thank you” for the achievements so far in the relationship that had just begun. , Rob Walker, a partner in the Biden family, testified on January 26th.
According to a May 2017 email from former family associate James Gillier, Joe Biden at one point had a joint venture with CEFC, a now-defunct reputed cog in Beijing’s Belt and Road foreign influence campaign. I was once asked for a 10% interest in a business. He called Joe Biden a “great man.”
Former business associate Tony Bobulinski testified last week that he met with Joe Biden in May 2017 and talked twice about partnering with CEFC, but said he “never” discussed business with his relative’s partner. This further contradicts the president’s consistent assertion that he did not have any contact with his relative’s partner. their friends.
According to information in the Republican Party’s 2020 report, Joe Biden then contacted Chinese officials in July 2017, days before an additional $5.1 million was transferred to accounts associated with Hunter and James Biden. He was identified by Hunter, now 54, in a threatening text message sent to him. -Leaded by a Senate panel.
The Senate report alleges that at one point CEFC provided James and his wife Sarah with a credit card with a $100,000 limit for the purpose of “global spending,” and House investigators say it It is said to be corroborated by witness testimony.
According to House Republicans, James allegedly sent $40,000 of the CEFC proceeds to Joe Biden via check on September 3, 2017, in the name of repaying the loan, but House Republicans say they have not yet completed the paperwork related to the loan. It is claimed that there are no records of this and that the flow of funds is hidden. The fact that the original funds that were allegedly repaid came from a law firm with ties to multiple Biden family members.
James Biden’s relationships with domestic and Mexican officials are also expected to be investigated.
In 2006, when he and Hunter were trying to buy a New York City hedge fund, James is said to have said: “Don’t worry about investors, there are people all over the world who want to invest in Joe Biden…” Investors are queuing up on 747s full of cash,” Politico reporter Ben Schrekin Garr wrote in his 2021 book.
Joe Biden was the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time.
Simmons Cooper, a law firm affiliated with wealthy asbestos lawyer Jeff Cooper, invested $1 million in a hedge fund in 2006. That same year, Congress considered an asbestos reform bill in which then-Sen. Joe Biden, as a result of lobbying efforts by Mr. Cooper’s company, was in a position to block changes that could limit funding for payments. played a very important role.
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 was wiretapped by the FBI as part of the bribery investigation of Mississippi lawyer Dickie Scruggs in 2007, when his brother was still a senator. The Washington Post reported During December.
Mr. Biden, who was not indicted in the case, discussed forming a law firm with Mr. Scruggs and co-conspirator Tim Balducci that would employ him, his nephew Hunter Biden, and Mr. James’s wife, Sarah. was.
On one occasion, Scruggs flew Joe Biden to a fundraiser, the Washington Post reported.
Then Sen. The Washington Post reported that after Mr. Scruggs, the architect of the multibillion-dollar litigation scheme, paid $100,000 to Mr. Biden’s lobbying firm in 1998, Mr. He went from opposing federal legislation to punishing tobacco companies for lying about their addictiveness to supporting it.
“If he wasn’t the senator’s brother, I probably wouldn’t have hired him,” Scruggs told the newspaper.
Joey Langston, another Mississippi lawyer who was convicted and disbarred in a separate bribery case, told House investigators in testimony released this month that during Joe Biden’s final term, He said he lent James Biden 800,000 yen in 2016 and 2017, but only got back 400,000 yen.
The troubled lawyer who hosted a fundraiser for Joe Biden ProPublica reportedwas tried and failed Conspiracy has swirled over whether he was also seeking a federal pardon to overturn a bribery conviction in court in 2016.
Politico reported this week that James Biden later called on his brother again on a business call in 2018 when he was seeking foreign investors for local hospital company Amecor in exchange for a $600,000 loan. (originally $400,000 in January, then $200,000 on March 1st). , 2018.
“One person who received Jim Biden’s health care pitch recalled a phone call in which Jim Biden told him he was sitting next to his brother Joe in a car.” Politico reported Sunday.
On the same day he received the $200,000 from Amecore, James wrote a check for the same amount to his brother Joe, with “Loan Repayment” in the subject line. The company filed for bankruptcy without following through on James Biden’s promise to “obtain significant investments from the Middle East based on his political connections,” according to court filings by the company’s bankruptcy trustee.
In another potential area of investigation, construction company Hill International entered into a secret agreement with Saudi Arabia to resolve a $140 million dispute over a desalination plant built by a Hill subsidiary in the 1980s. He reportedly hired James Biden in 2011 to negotiate.
James told Sullivan that he attended the meeting “because of his position and relationship” with his brother, who was vice president at the time.
Hill International CEO Irvin Richter reportedly told Sullivan that he would keep James Biden in office because Saudi Arabia was “not going to be tough on the vice president’s brother.” There is.
