QUID PRO BRO

James Biden paid Joe $200K while selling ‘political connections’

A healthcare company paid James Biden $200,000 in 2018 to help get it funding from the Middle East. But the same day James was paid, he turned around and wrote a check to Joe Biden for the same amount (above), House investigators found, raising questions about how Joe benefited from James’ and Hunter’s influence peddling.

WASHINGTON — President Biden received a $200,000 check in 2018 from his brother James on the same day that James received the same amount from a hospital chain by promising to secure a Mideast investor, bank records obtained by Congress show.

“This summer, Joe Biden said: ‘Where’s the money?’ Well, we found some,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a video posted Friday afternoon to X.

Comer said that James Biden wrote the check to his powerful brother as a “loan repayment,” without providing further context.

“Even if this was a personal loan repayment, it’s still troubling that Joe Biden’s ability to be paid back by his brother depended on the success of his family’s shady financial dealings,” the chairman said.

James Biden received a total of $600,000 in loans from sincedefunct rural hospital operator Americore Health in 2018.

Bankruptcy trustees for the firm said in a July 2022 court filing that James “procured the $600,000.00 in loans from Americore . . . based upon representations that his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections.”

‘Wild goose chase’

The records do not specify which Middle Eastern country James was courting, though he was involved in a different business relationship pertaining to Saudi Arabia at around the same time.

It’s unclear what progress James made toward securing the foreign funds before Americore filed for bankruptcy in 2019.

James received an initial $400,000 tranche from Americore in January 2018 and the latter $200,000, which was sent to Joe Biden, on March 1 of that year, according to Comer and court records.

The transfer to Joe, who was not in elected office at the time, could be the strongest evidence to date that the 80-year-old president benefited financially from his involvement in his relatives’ business dealings, including in foreign countries.

Biden claimed in 2019 while a presidential candidate that he had “never discussed with my son, or my brother . . . anything having to do with their businesses,” but significant evidence has since emerged that he regularly interacted with his relatives’ partners from countries such as China and Ukraine.

House Republicans launched an impeachment inquiry last month and issued subpoenas for James Biden and First Son Hunter Biden’s bank records.

“We’re still digging into evidence subpoenaed from bank accounts belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, and James and Sara Biden — the brother and sister-in-law of the president,” Comer said Friday.

James Biden ultimately agreed in September 2022 to repay $350,000 of the $600,000 loan to Americore’s creditors.

White House spokesman Ian Sams said in a statement that “President Biden didn’t do anything wrong,” without offering specifics on the loan James said he was repaying on the day that the $200,000 changed hands.

“After rummaging through thousands of pages of a private citizen’s bank records, they have again turned up zero evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden — and that’s because there is none,” Sams said.

“This entire exercise has become a self-debunking wild goose chase that’s only turning up evidence that President Biden did nothing wrong.”

Evidence mounting

House Republicans have developed significant evidence that Joe Biden interacted with his relatives’ foreign associates — including those from China, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia and Ukraine — and have been investigating whether he received direct financial benefits from the foreign dealings.

Hunter wrote in a January 2019 message retrieved from his former laptop that he had to give “half ” of his income to Joe Biden, and the House Oversight Committee in May identified nine Biden family members who allegedly received foreign revenue.

Former Hunter business associate Devon Archer revealed in Oversight Committee testimony released in August that Joe Biden attended two dinners at DC’s Cafe Milano restaurant in 2014 and 2015 with his son’s patrons from Eastern Europe and Central Asia, including Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings — which paid Hunter up to $1 million per year beginning in April 2014 to serve on its board as his dad led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.

Archer also testified that Hunter stepped away from a gathering at the Four Seasons in Dubai to “call DC” with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky and Pozharskyi in December 2015.

An FBI informant file released in July by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) says Zlochevsky complained in 2016 that he was “coerced” into paying $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for the then-vice president’s help in ousting Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin. The bribery claim has not been proven.

Hunter and James’ associate James Gilliar wrote in a May 2017 email that partners were considering a 10% cut for Joe Biden.