President Biden's brother James has reportedly been the subject of an investigation by the Justice Department as part of a larger examination of a hospital chain that is reported to have received "improper" Medicare payments.
Federal investigators in South Florida recently probed transactions linked to Jim Biden as part of a criminal investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter. The investigation remains open, according to one of them.
Meanwhile, Justice Department officials prosecuting an ongoing Medicare fraud case in Pennsylvania were seeking information about the activities of President Joe Biden’s brother as recently as last year, according to a third person familiar with that case. All three were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The revelations add to the potential legal minefield surrounding the first family at a time when House Republicans are pursuing an impeachment inquiry aimed at the Biden family’s business dealings and Hunter Biden faces federal tax charges in California and gun charges in Delaware.
The hospital chain in question, Americore, has already suffered one "health care entrepreneur" pleading guilty to Medicare fraud in Pennsylvania.
At least one transaction described by the anonymous sources and supposedly examined in the investigation involved a $200,000 "loan payment" to President Biden.
But a previously unreported lawsuit alleges that the payments Jim Biden received were improper. In a complaint filed in Palm Beach County in 2022, investors in the Third Friday Total Return Fund allege that the money manager in charge of the fund looted millions of dollars from it by making sham loans to Americore, then diverted roughly $600,000 of the embezzled funds to Jim Biden.
Jim Biden transferred $200,000 of the disputed money to Joe Biden in a transaction that he and the White House have said was a loan repayment.
Joe Biden seems to have acted as a personal savings and loan for much of his family, based on the number of loan repayments he has seemed to receive.
This latest revelation comes as the GOP-controlled House of Representatives is still carrying out an impeachment inquiry against the President.
Two of the key figures in the case, money manager Michael Lewitt and Amer Rustom, the CEO of a business development company called The Platinum Group, apparently had ties to prominent Middle Eastern and North African figures. Jim Biden worked with Lewitt and Rustom to negotiate loans to Americore. The timing of these loans is very, very interesting:
The first loan on Jan. 12 coincided with a $400,000 payment from Americore to Jim Biden’s company, the Lion Hall Group. In his prepared statement for his impeachment inquiry interview, Jim Biden said that payment and a subsequent one he received for $200,000 were made partly as compensation for arranging the loans.
On the same day Jim Biden received the $200,000 payment, March 1, he or his wife, Sara Biden, made out a $200,000 check to Joe Biden from their joint account, describing it as a loan repayment on the memo line.
It is, of course, unclear as to when Joe Biden loaned his brother any money, under what terms any such loan may have been made, or what repayment terms were involved; a lump-sum loan repayment of $200,000 between family members seems a bit suspect.
Medicare fraud is a major problem in the American healthcare industry, costing the U.S. taxpayers as much as $60 billion per year. In my previous career, I have had occasion to testify in Medicare fraud cases, and I suspect that the $60 billion figure is low; that only counts Medicare fraud cases that are exposed, and there may well be that much more again that goes undetected.