First brother James Biden to face scrutiny over loan repayments, China deals in impeachment inquiry
WASHINGTON — President Biden’s younger brother James has agreed to testify next month in the House impeachment♏ inquiry into alleged corruption by Joe Bi💫den during his vice presidency.
James,♕ 74, and first son Hunter Biden, 53, involved their powerful relative in various foreign business relationships — drawing Republican allegations of influence-peddling.
“James Biden will appear for a transcribed interview on February 21, 2024. We look forward to his testimony,” the House Oversight Committee Wednesday.
The testimony is set for exactly one week before Hunter appears on Feb. 28.
Republic💧ans are expected to grill James on his work with Chinese state-linked CEFC China Energy, which began paying th💙e Bidens millions of dollars for ill-defined services shortly after Joe Biden left office as vice president in 2017.
James Biden also was involved in efforts to court Mex💫ico’s business elite and allegedly invoked his brother’s political power while doing business when Joe was a prominent senator before assuming the vice presidency in 2009.
The terms of alleged loan repayments from James to Joe Biden are another likely topic as ♍congressional Republicans probe whether the president personally benefited from foreign dealings.
In the Chinese venture, Hunter and James Biden shared $1 million transferred in Mꩲarch 2017 by a CEFC subsidiary and later divvied up $5.1 million transferred within 10 days of a threatening text message sent by Hunter in July 2017 to a China-based associate, in which he i🌸nvoked his father and threatened retribution if an agreed-upon deal was not enacted.
Joe Biden allegedly hobnobbed with his relatives’ partners in the CEFC deal — including conferring twice in May 2017 with another partner, Tony Bobulinski — and he was named in an October 2017 email as a participant in CEFC’s attempt to purchase 💧US natural gas.
CEFC, now defunct, was reputed to be a cog in Beijing’s foreign-include “Belt and Road” initiative, which focused on infrastructure and energy investments abroad to benefit the Chinese government.
Joe Biden joined a meeting in or around March 2017 at DC’s Four Seasons hotel with about 10 CEFC associates — including the firm’s chairman, Ye Jia🍨nming, who has since gone missing in his homeland amid corruption allegations there, Biden family associate Rob Walker told impeachment investigators last week.
Walker also testified that the Bidens’ initial $1 million from CEFC was compensation for work performed during the Obama-Biden administration.
Bank records acquired by Congress indicate that Joe Biden rec💝eived payments of $40,000 and $200,000 from his brother after James received the same amounts weeks beforehand from a law firm associated with the Biden family, which Democrats say came from Joe Biden.
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) alleged that the $40,000 transferred to Joe Biden’s bank account on Sept 3, 2017, was from “laundered” Chinese funds.
James Biden paid Joe Biden $200,000 on March 1, 2018 — the same day that James received a $200,000 transfer from troubled rural hospital company Americore by pledging to use his political connections to secure a Middle Eastern investor, according🦋 to bankruptcy filings.
Intrigue has followed James Biden’s dealings for decades — dating to his takeover alongside Hunter in the early 2000s of failed investment bank Paradigm.
James Biden allegedly predicted Paradigm would succeed because “we’ve got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden,” according to a 2021 book by Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger.
In 2006, the law firm SimmonsCooper — associated with wealthy asbestos lawyer Jeff Cooper — invested $1 million in the enterprise, the same year Congress considered asꦆbestos reform legislation.
Then-Sen. Joe Bide🅠n played a pivotal role blocking a change that could have limited funding for legal payouts after lobbying by Cooper’s firm.
A Joe Biden spokesman that the money wasn’t linked to the bill and ꦕthat the Biden family bank repaid the investment.
Cooper later partnered with the Biden family on business pursuits in Mexico during the Obama-Biden administration — including posing for a 2015 group photo with Mexican guests and Joe Biden at the official vice president’s residence and riding aboard Air Force Two for an official 2016 trip to Mexico.
An attorney for James Biden did🍎 not immediately re༒spond to a request for comment on his deposition.
The depositions by Hunter and James Biden come as Republicans leading the impeachment inquiry demand records from Joe Biden’s vice presidency that could show whether he altered US policy to benefit his relatives’ business interests.
Comer, joined by two other House committee chairmen, wrote Wednesday to White House counsel Ed Siskel to demand copies of all drafts for a speech delivered by Joe Biden to Ukraine’s parliament in December 2015 — to vet allegations that Joe Biden used $1 billion in US aid to force out prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin to protect Burisma Holdings, the energy company that was paying Hunter Biden a salary of $1 million per year.
The Republican committee leaders wrote that the records are held by the National Archives, which informed them that “the White House has refused to permit [the Archives] to provide the Oversight Committee with any documents related to the 2015 Ukraine speech [and] lying on Executive Order 13489, the White House has extended its review period by 60 days on three separate occasions — September 22, 2023; November 21, 2023; and January 22, 2024.”
