WASHINGTON — A former business partner of James Biden has agreed to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud Medicare of $51 million through a testing company with ties to Biden’s brother.
Keaton Langston, 39, admitted to using pharmacies, durable medical equipment companies and financially-interested laboratories to bill for unnecessary tests and orders. Department of Justice The news was revealed in court documents filed last week.
James Biden, 75, has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing and has sought to distance himself from Langston, whose father, Joey Langston, was also linked to Biden.
Keaton Langston founded a lab company called Fountain Health in May 2017 to provide services to regional hospital operator Americore Health, which later filed for bankruptcy.
Records show James Biden got involved with Fountain Health in 2017, then linked to Americore and received a $600,000 loan from the company in 2018 as Biden vowed to use his political connections to secure foreign investors.
James allegedly gave $200,000 of the funds to Joe Biden as loan repayment.
Shortly after the lab company was founded, Joey Langston sent an email to James Biden, his son Keaton, and three others on July 12, 2017, about an upcoming “meeting with partners at Fountain Health.” Politico reported During February.
“Jim will update the group on the outcome of his discussions with his contacts today. [Blue Cross Blue Shield]”,” Langston wrote, “also will be discussed as to how to proceed with the union contacts that Jim and Keaton have made within the past two weeks.”
Paul Fishman, an attorney for James Biden, did not immediately respond to a request for comment but has previously said his client “acted ethically and with integrity in all of his business dealings.”
Keaton Langston in September Repay $240,000 to Americore In a civil settlement, James Biden will Repay $350,000 to Americore.
The Biden and Langston families have had long-standing financial ties.
Langston hosted a fundraiser for Joe Biden when he was a senator. ProPublica reported.
Joey Langston also loaned James Biden $800,000, most of the installments were made toward the end of the Obama-Biden administration in 2016, and only $400,000 was ultimately repaid, he told House impeachment investigators in February.
A wealthy Mississippi lawyer He pleaded guilty in 2008. He was sentenced to three years in federal prison for his role in a conspiracy to bribe a judge in an asbestos litigation fee dispute.
He was seeking to overturn his conviction for loans he made to the son of the then-vice president.
Dickie Scruggs, an attorney who was Joey Langston’s alleged co-conspirator in the bribery case, was also involved in a second indictment for attempting to bribe another judge.
James Biden was wiretapped by the FBI in 2007 as part of the Second Bribery Investigation. The Washington Post reported in December.
At the time, James was in discussions with Scruggs and co-conspirator Tim Balducci about starting a law firm that would employ himself, his nephew Hunter Biden and James’ wife, Sarah.
According to a Washington Post report, Biden, then a senator, opposed federal legislation that would have punished tobacco companies for lying about cigarette addictiveness, but became a supporter after Scruggs, who was planning a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit, paid James Biden’s lobbying firm $100,000 in 1998.
“If he wasn’t the senator’s brother, I probably wouldn’t have hired him,” Scruggs told the paper.
Scruggs also flew Joe Biden to fundraising events on his private jet, according to The Washington Post.
Joe Biden has consistently maintained that he has “never” discussed business with his son or brother, and in December last year and March this year said he “doesn’t interact” with their partners, including foreign officials in countries where he had influence as vice president.
Evidence including photographs, emails and witness accounts show that Biden did in fact interact with associates of his son and brother from two business companies with ties to the Chinese government, as well as with clients in Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia and Ukraine.
James Biden has partnered with his eldest son Hunter on a number of ventures and has not always been shy about the direction he is pitching to investors.
“There are people all over the world who want to invest in Joe Biden,” James reportedly said in the early 2000s when he and Hunter were in the process of buying the investment bank Paradigm, according to a 2021 book by Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger.
