What About Frank? It Isn't Just Jim and Hunter Biden Whose Dealings Raise Questions
While questions abound regarding the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and brother, Jim — and for good reason — we don’t hear all that much about the President’s youngest brother, Francis “Frank” W. Biden. The 69-year-old Boca Raton, Florida resident, who serves as a “non-attorney adviser” to the Berman Law Group, has largely flown under the radar (perhaps not all that difficult given the notable exploits of his nephew.)
Which isn’t to say there’s been no media coverage of Frank Biden. In fact, as RedState’s Bonchie notes in this January article, CNN did recently report on the family’s corruption:
That dynamic has played out again, this time on CNN, with the liberal network doing a full report on the corruption surrounding the Biden family.
The president’s brothers have invoked it in their private business pursuits over the years to suggest access to power and influence, according to a CNN review of court documents, emails and video recordings as well as interviews with former business acquaintances.
A year after Biden was elected, for example, his youngest brother, Frank, boasted in a speech to medical professionals gathered in Boston of the “bully pulpit” he was afforded due to “my brother Joey,” and vowed to help attendees “get federal dollars.” Just three months ago, Frank Biden was an invited keynote speaker at a medical conference in Venice, Italy, where he gave advice to a group lobbying the federal government – a trip he acknowledged he did not pay for but declined to say who did.
More from CNN on that Venice trek:
In October, as heart doctors from around the world gathered at a former monastery on a tiny island in Venice, Italy, a keynote speaker from the United States delivered a lecture on “the future of global health care.”
The speaker was not a doctor. Nor did he have an extensive background in health care, global or otherwise. But Francis W. “Frank” Biden did have something else: A brother in the White House.
In his speech, Frank Biden talked about his family and his brother’s cancer initiative, according to attendees. Following his remarks, the leader of a trade group who attended the event promptly posted a video from Venice informing members he represents that he’d spoken with Frank Biden about their efforts to lobby the federal government on Medicare reimbursement rules. The president’s brother, he told his members, had agreed to help.
…
Frank Biden, who is not a registered federal lobbyist, told CNN he has not communicated with the government on behalf of the Heart Rhythm Society and refuted any notion that he has somehow leveraged his brother’s office for personal gain.
He initially told CNN that his trip to Italy, including his flight and one or two nights in a hotel, was paid for by the CEO of BioSig Technologies, a health technology company that co-sponsored the conference.
The Venice conference wasn’t the first time Frank Biden spoke at an event associated with BioSig. In the summer of 2021, he gave a speech to health professionals at a dinner in Boston hosted by the company.
At that event, Frank Biden boasted of “the bully pulpit that I have as a result of the privilege of being associated with my brother Joey,” and vowed to “do everything in my power to support you to get the job done, to get federal dollars to your research,” a video of his speech shows.
But the relationship between Frank Biden and the Connecticut-based BioSig is murky, with both parties giving shifting statements when asked about it.
A spokesman for BioSig initially told CNN the company wanted to learn about a federal research program pushed by President Biden and retained the law firm where Frank Biden works as a non-attorney adviser. Two days later, the spokesman, Andrew Ballou, said he’d been misinformed and that BioSig had never retained the firm. Ballou also denied Frank Biden’s assertion that BioSig’s CEO had paid for his trip to Italy.
Frank Biden, for his part, at first told CNN he had consulted for BioSig for about a year. He then reversed himself, saying he had never worked as a consultant for the company. He later clarified in a text message that he had provided BioSig informal sales assistance. As for his Italian travel, Frank Biden said in another text message, “someone” paid for it, though he did not say who.
In January 2020, ABC News ran a piece titled: “How Frank Biden leveraged his famous name for business gain.”
In it, they detailed Frank Biden’s murky relationship with a controversial charter school enterprise — a role for which he reportedly earned $70,000 per year over the course of five years:
In 2009, the year Joe Biden took office as vice president, a local business executive met the politician’s younger brother, Frank, at a Starbucks in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and later asked him to become the president and front man for a fledgling charter school venture.
Frank Biden, a longtime real estate developer in the state, accepted the offer, and over the years, he touted his famous last name and prominent connections in Washington to help land the company a series of charter contracts from local officials in Florida to open charter schools, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars over a five-year period from the company in the process.
In media interviews at the time, Frank Biden was unabashed – calling his last name “a tremendous asset” because of the family’s record of “taking care of people who need help,” and telling people it brought him “automatic acceptance” as he sought government approvals for the for-profit Mavericks in Education.
As indicated, Mavericks has been steeped in controversy over the years:
Company accused of fraud and mismanagement
Since opening their doors, schools operated by Mavericks in Education have been mired in controversy, struggled with performance, and, in lawsuits and state audits, faced allegations of fraudulent activity.
A 2014 lawsuit filed by two Pinellas County school district executives – which named Frank Biden as a defendant – accused Mavericks of “falsely inflating the operating expenses associated with the operations of the charter schools” in an effort to “divert funds from the education of the students to the owners of [Mavericks]” – to the tune of $22 million. The lawsuit was ultimately dropped.
In 2012, a former teacher at the Mavericks school in Palm Beach filed a whistleblower lawsuit accusing her supervisors at the company of altering student enrollment records in an effort to secure more government funding. This case was settled out of court. The terms of the settlement were kept private.
A pair of audits by the state of Florida in 2012 and 2014 found that Mavericks schools operated in Palm Beach and Broward Counties were beset by similar issues. Pegg said those audits led school districts to develop corrective action plans for Mavericks, which the company followed.
In February 2021, the Washington Post published an article titled: “Biden brother’s role in Florida law firm complicates White House ethics message.” The piece points out Frank’s penchant for trading on his family ties:
As President Biden enters his third week in office, the firm where his brother is a “non-attorney senior adviser” has aggressively touted its ties to power — emphasizing the brothers’ connection, declaring that their values are aligned, highlighting Biden’s policies as it advertises its services and generally playing up Frank Biden’s role even on cases in which he is not involved.
Of course, WaPo couldn’t resist the “But Trump!” angle:
As Biden seeks to break dramatically from the mingling of family and government that characterized Donald Trump’s presidency, Frank Biden’s activities could muddy the message. At issue is his work at the small Boca Raton, Fla.-based firm, which long focused on personal injury cases but in recent years has sought to expand its horizons and play on a bigger field, in part by hiring Frank Biden in 2018.
After Biden’s inauguration in January, Berman Law Group moved swiftly to capitalize on his immigration policy shifts. In a social media post, it highlighted the president’s halt to deportations while pitching a “free consultation” to anyone seeking its services. The firm deleted those posts Sunday, hours after a reporter from The Washington Post inquired about them.
And for a fairly thorough takedown of Frank Biden’s character, note this February 2020 Daily Mail article:
“Meet Frank Biden, Joe’s ‘penniless’ brother who has snubbed mourning family he owes $1m – but who dined at the White House, boasts of his links to the former VP and vacations at $1,000-a-night ranch”
- Frank Biden, 66, is 11 years the former vice president’s junior and the youngest of his three siblings
- Now he is revealed by DailyMail.com to owe the family of a man killed in a 1999 car crash almost $1 million and never to have paid a cent
- Younger Biden has an opaque resume and appears to have offered markedly different accounts of his career over the years
- Now lives in Atlantis, Florida, with his partner Mindy Ward, a Hooters waitress-turned American Airlines flight attendant, at a house owned by her parents
- They were at a White House state dinner during his brother’s time in office and he calls himself a senior adviser to a pro-Biden political action committee
- Has described himself as being educated at University of Delaware, San Francisco State University, Cornell University and Pepperdine Law
- Worked for the Government Printing Office as congressional public affairs officer between 1993 and 1997
- His marriage to journalist Janine Jaquet, with whom he has daughter Alana, 30, ended in the mid-1990s, and he has daughter, Megan, from another relationship.
So, yet again, we see numerous red flags pointing to influence peddling and questionable practices involving yet another Biden family member.
We know the Oversight Committee is looking into the Biden family and the extent of its corruption. Rep. James Comer (R-KY), Chair of the committee, shared his recent appearance on Fox News with Sean Hannity outlining the issues the committee is looking into and what the next steps of the investigation may hold.
While Comer doesn’t specifically mention Frank Biden in that clip, it’s clear that he’s been on the committee’s radar for quite some time, as well:
In the letters, the Republicans outlined several incidents of concern from President Biden’s current position and from his time as Vice President, including the most recent surge in Hunter Biden’s art sales; President Biden’s sister’s, Valerie Biden Owens, intent to publish a book detailing her time as “The Joe Biden Whisperer”; and President Biden’s brother, Frank Biden, using his relationship with the President in advertising for the law firm he advises.
The Biden family’s actions during the Obama-Biden Administration are similarly concerning and reveal a potential pattern of using the White House for profit. For example, in 2011 Frank Biden used the Biden name and connection to then-Vice President Biden to his advantage. In 2013, Hunter Biden flew on Air Force 2 with then-Vice President Biden to China as he worked on forming a Chinese private equity fund. And in 2016, then-Vice President Biden flew his son Hunter Biden and his business associate on Air Force 2 to Mexico where Hunter and his associate conducted business.
Hopefully, with Republicans in charge of the House and the Oversight Committee, these investigations will begin to yield some fruit.
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