Biden’s brother paid him $200K while seeking Mideast investor for hospital firm
WASHINGTON — President Biden received a $200,000 check in 2018 from his younger brother James on the same day that he received the same amount from a US 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 since-defunct rural hospital operator Americore Health in 2018.
The firm’s bankruptcy trustee said in a July 2022 court filing that James Biden “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.”
The records do not specify which Middle Eastern country James Biden 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 Biden made toward securing the foreign funds before Americore filed for bankruptcy in 2019.
James Biden received an initial $400,000 tranche from Americore on Jan. 12, 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 Biden, 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 more specific information on the loan James Biden 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.”
The top Oversight Committee Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said Friday evening that James Biden’s bank records “show that in 2017 and 2018, while President Biden was not in office, he provided two short-term loans to his brother, James, who repaid each loan within two months.”
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 Biden 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 Biden 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 Biden stepped away from a gathering at the Four Seasons in Dubai to “call DC” with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky and Pozharsky 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, who was removed from office in March 2016 after a sustained campaign by Joe Biden.
The bribery claim has not been proven.
Joe Biden also was put on speaker phone while vice president during roughly 20 business meetings with Hunter’s foreign associates, including French and Chinese nationals, Archer told the House Oversight Committee in a July 31 interview.
A text message released in June by House Republicans directly mentions Joe Biden as being involved in the shakedown of a Chinese government-linked business.
IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, who supervised the Hunter Biden tax fraud investigation for more than three years, provided Congress with that message, in which Hunter wrote on July 30, 2017, that he was “sitting here with my father” and warned of consequences if a deal was aborted.
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter Biden wrote.
“Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” the now-53-year-old went on, warning he would “make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
“I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father,” reiterated Hunter, who was at his father’s Wilmington, Del., home on the same day as the message.
Within two weeks of that threat, $5.1 million flowed from CEFC China Energy to Biden-linked accounts — on top of more than $1 million transferred earlier in the year, according to a 2020 report by Republican-led Senate committees.
Hunter and James Biden’s associate James Gilliar wrote in a May 2017 email that partners were considering a 10% cut for Joe Biden and an October 2017 email identifies Joe Biden as a participant in a call about CEFC’s attempt to purchase US natural gas.
It was the Biden family’s second major venture in China — after the then-second son cofounded state-backed investment fund BHR Partners in 2013, just 12 days after Hunter joined then-Vice President Biden aboard Air Force Two for an official trip to Beijing.
Hunter introduced his dad to BHR CEO Jonathan Li during the trip to China’s capital and Joe Biden later wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children.
The terms of Hunter Biden’s alleged divestment from BHR Partners remain unclear.
