WASHINGTON — Oldest son James Biden is scheduled to appear Wednesday in a closed House impeachment inquiry deposition focused on President Biden’s role in the family’s business dealings.
Mr James, 74, is said to have used his brother’s political career to benefit business at home and abroad, sometimes collaborating with his eldest son Hunter Biden, 54. , whose exploits are best known for the release of sensational emails from Mr Hunter’s discarded laptop implicating his father. .
Republicans will probe opaque bank transfers totaling $240,000 from James to Joe Biden, as well as the 81-year-old president’s business ties including China, Mexico, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. He is expected to press Mr James for information about the possibility.
It’s unclear how the eldest son plans to handle the sharp questions before his nephew, Hunter, takes on the same high-stakes game on February 28th.
One of James Biden’s most famous business partnerships, and perhaps the one that causes the most questions, is the one in which the Biden family has had a number of relationships since weeks after Joe Biden left office as vice president in January. It is linked to Chinese state-owned company CEFC China Energy, which provided $1 million. 2017.
The first lump sum of more than $1 million was provided to Hunter and James Biden in March 2017, shortly after Joe Biden met with CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming, making it the first in a relationship that began in 2015. It was a “thank you” for the service, said Robb, a former partner in the Biden family. Mr. Walker 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.
Joe Biden was later name-checked by Hunter in a July 2017 threatening text message to a China-based official, and less than 10 days later, Joe Biden was forfeited an additional $5.1 million, according to information contained in one tip. The money was reportedly sent to accounts associated with Hunter and James Biden. A 2020 report by a Republican-led Senate committee.
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.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) subpoenaed credit card records related to James Biden last week after obtaining other bank records last year.
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.
Alleged decades of indiscretion
James Biden, known to those close to him as the “Congressman Mountain Dew bigwig,” has kept the reasons business associates have to pay him little secret, according to former family insider Devon Archer. It is said that they have not done so.
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.
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.
House Republicans and Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers say that in many cases of the Biden family’s business dealings, including the case involving Hunter Biden, the proceeds were described as loans as a potential tax avoidance strategy.
Democrats said last year that all signs point to Joe Biden simply being a good brother lending money to James for unexplained short-term reasons.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the top Democrat on the oversight committee, said last year that James Biden’s bank records “were disclosed to his younger brother James in 2017 and 2018, while President Biden was not in office.” “It shows that he had taken out two short-term loans.” A person who repaid each loan he paid within two months. ”
Joe Biden’s own bank records have not been obtained by impeachment investigators.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment Tuesday during a press briefing when asked about her eldest son’s looming testimony.
James Biden’s lawyer Paul Fishman told Politico about his eldest son’s profile in a possible future statement that Biden “acted ethically and honorably in all of his business dealings.” Ta.
Domestic and foreign conspiracies
The evolution of Joe Biden’s policy positions on domestic issues such as asbestos and tobacco liability is also likely to be subject to questions, as are possible ties to further foreign companies.
In 2006, Simmons Cooper, a law firm affiliated with wealthy asbestos lawyer Jeff Cooper, invested $1 million in a hedge fund inherited by Hunter and James Biden.
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.
The Biden family’s relationship with the troubled Mississippi lawyer spanned more than a decade.
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.
James Biden is also involved in additional overseas business, which is attracting attention.
Emails found on Hunter Biden’s discarded laptop show that sometime in August 2017, James Biden requested investment from the Qatar Investment Authority, and one of the officials, Khalid Sultan Al Rabban. It turned out that she had shared the draft of a letter addressed to her with her eldest son.
Construction company Hill International hired James Biden in 2011 to negotiate a secret deal with Saudi Arabia to resolve a $140 million dispute over a desalination plant built by a Hill subsidiary in the 1980s. It is said that
James Biden told Thomas Sullivan, a former Treasury official turned private investigator hired by a rival company, about the February 2012 meeting with Saudi officials where Hill would receive the “final payment” for the desalination plant. He is said to have said that he attended the meeting.
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 is said to have told Sullivan that he kept James Biden because Saudi Arabia was “not going to be tough on the vice president’s brother.” .
