While President-elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter has dominated headlines about the Biden family business, landing lucrative overseas deals trading on his father’s name, Joe Biden’s brother, James, is too often overlooked in the corruption saga.
Yes, it’s true that Hunter Biden spent years raking in upwards of $50,000 a month on the board of a Ukrainian energy company despite no prior experience in the industry. It’s true that Hunter Biden’s father was serving as the “public face” of White House policy towards Ukraine at the same time.
It’s true that Joe Biden, who spent his entire presidential campaign denying that he ever spoke business with his son, was introduced to an executive of Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian firm, introduced by Hunter Biden. It’s true that Senate investigators found Hunter Biden took $3.5 million from the wife of an ex-Moscow mayor.
It’s true that Hunter Biden parlayed his father’s position into receiving an $80,000 diamond from a Chinese businessman with deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party. It’s true that Hunter Biden was discussing a $10 million annual contract with the same Chinese businessmen paid for “introductions alone.” It’s true that Hunter Biden was discussing 10 percent of that sum flowing to Joe Biden.
It’s also true that Hunter Biden was one of three individuals showered in a six-figure shopping spree paid for by the same Chinese business leaders flagged as potential criminal activity by Senate investigators. The other two were James Biden, and James’ wife, Sara Biden.
The Senate report released in September after a three-year investigation expanded the public scope of the Biden family’s decades-long conflicts of interest featuring Joe Biden in the upper echelons of government. By unveiling ties between James Biden and the same Chinese businessmen courting the former vice president through Hunter, the family web of interests interlaced with the Chinese has given rise to new questions regarding Joe Biden’s knowledge and involvement with the family business.
Those questions began to be answered by business partner-turned whistleblower Tony Bobulinski. In a full-hour interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in October, he claimed the family business activity in China had been corrupt to the point the current president-elect is “compromised” by the Chinese Communist Party.
“I just don’t see, given the history here and the facts, how Joe can’t be influenced in some manner based on the history,” Bobulinski said in prime time.
Bobulinski emphasized the family’s sensitivity about Joe Biden’s involvement. Bobulinski said when he raised concerns with James Biden over the former vice president’s role, James Biden dismissed them, reassuring Bobulinski the family would simply employ “plausible deniability.”
Public reporting of James Biden’s business deals alongside Hunter in China have almost certainly only scratched the surface. What we do know, however, beyond the Chinese business activity that featured an extravagant shopping spree, is that James Biden is under ongoing investigation by federal authorities in Western Pennsylvania over a series of hospital deals struck under Americore Health, a firm built on the model of buying and operating rural hospitals.
FBI agents raided one of the now-bankrupt firm’s hospitals in January, along with the home of its CEO, Grant White. James Biden’s home was not raided, James, a heavy investor in the company, became the subject of a lawsuit from White, accusing him of fraud and racketeering. This ultimately toppled the firm to the ground.
In court documents reported by The Federalist’s Mark Hemingway this spring, White accused James Biden of diverting funds for the struggling Americore for his own, partly used to save a vacation residence in Florida. White says James Biden never paid the company back as the firm was going under.
James, however, had been leveraging his family name to cultivate trust in his ability to grow the business.
“[Biden told me] there’s not a single door in the country that we can’t open. So if I wanted to meet, you know, the head of Google, it’s a phone call,” White said, as Hemingway reported. “He always represented himself as the fundraiser for his brother’s campaigns… he was the guy raising the money and so he knew everybody.”
But the company collapsed and lawsuits followed. Now James Biden is the subject of a federal probe.
In February, however, a lengthy report published by ProPublica chronicled James leveraging the family name through the decades to land six- and seven-figure loans through donors to his older brother’s campaigns.
“The vice president and his brother have always understood and agreed that James’ business ventures are separate from and independent of Joe Biden’s career in public life,” Bates said.
We’ve heard that line before, such as when Joe Biden fat-shamed an Iowa voter for bringing up his son’s Ukrainian business dealings.
“Yet on occasion,” ProPublica reported, “as Jim pursued opportunities, Joe met with his potential clients or partners, at Jim’s request.”