While President Biden sought to distance himself from his family’s business dealings during his presidential run and eventual election, a new report details the extent to which the president’s aides have been involved in the Biden family’s business ventures.
Politico reported that Biden shares a personal bookkeeper with his son Hunter Biden and a personal lawyer with his brother Jim Biden, and that then-Vice President Biden’s former head of the Secret Service was helping Jim Biden investigate potential Chinese business partners.
The Bidens have previously said they maintain a strict “firewall” when it comes to business discussions, but the Politico report details how involved the president’s aides have been in negotiations with Hunter Biden and Jim Biden.
In one case, the president’s brother, Jim Biden, hired Dale Papillo, a former vice president’s Secret Service chief, to investigate a Chinese official whom the president’s son, Hunter Biden, was traveling to meet in 2017.
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President Biden and his brother Jim Biden during the 2020 election campaign. (Kristina Jamison/NBCU Photobank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)
The president’s brother stressed during the impeachment inquiry in February that he had personally requested an investigation into the president and therefore did not go into the situation ignorant, but maintained he was unaware of the details of any potential ventures being led by his nephew.
“I wanted to know who he was meeting with, if there were any complications,” Trump said in the impeachment interview, noting that it was common for members of the Biden family to keep details of their business dealings secret from each other.
The executive, Patrick Ho, was later arrested and convicted on federal corruption charges.
Politico reported that Jim Biden has long had a habit of taking advantage of people connected to his powerful brother. For example, in 1975, during Joe Biden’s early years as a senator, Jim Biden borrowed money from the senator’s old law firm, Walsh, Monzack & Owens, to finance a nightclub venture.
One partner, Mel Monczak, serves as the president’s personal attorney and campaign treasurer, and his current firm also serves as the registered agent for Celtic Capri, the president’s personal S corporation that manages his writing, speaking and other income.
President Biden (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
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Monczak also served as personal lawyer for Jim Biden and helped negotiate a proposed deal that would have given the president’s brother’s company a 35% stake in the Americor hospital chain.
While the deal never got done, Monczak’s involvement raised questions, but Jim Biden has maintained he was unaware of the lawyer’s arrangement with President Biden.
“I don’t know completely what he will or won’t do,” he said in February, “but I know he’s been intricately involved for the last 40 or 50 years.”
Another Biden aide, body man Fran Parson, remained involved with Hunter Biden even after she left the administration in 2014. Parson, who the Bidens say became like a son to Joe Biden while he served as a senator and vice president, pitched Hunter Biden a plan to develop SeaWorld in China in a deal struck in 2015 between Parson’s company and the state-run China Development Bank, emails show.
WhatsApp messages released as part of the IRS investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax affairs included conversations between Parson and Hunter Biden, including one in which Parson told Hunter Biden that his Chinese business partner, Bo Chang, was eager to help the president’s son get through his deepening financial difficulties.
Hunter Biden arrives at the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building in Wilmington, Delaware on June 5, 2024. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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The Politico report also detailed the role that another of Hunter Biden’s business partners, personal bookkeeper Eric Schwerin, played within the family, and that President Biden relied on the bookkeeper to manage his finances.
But Schwerin testified during the impeachment inquiry that there was no intermingling of the president’s assets with those of his son.
The presidential ties and family ties extend to Biden’s personal physician, Army physician Kevin O’Connor, who served as Biden’s vice president and remained close to Biden throughout his administration and is now Biden’s White House physician, the report noted.
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Between those two jobs, the president’s brother, Jim Biden, enlisted O’Connor as part of his proposed deal with Americore, reportedly wanting to partner with the VA to “use spare space in rural hospitals to treat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
