WASHINGTON – President Biden’s younger brother James has agreed to testify next month in the House impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden’s alleged corruption during his vice presidency.
James, 74, and his first son, Hunter Biden, 53, involved their powerful relative in several foreign business relationships, prompting Republican accusations 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 said. Announced Wednesday.
Testimony is scheduled for exactly one week before Hunter appears on February 28.
Republicans are expected to question James about his work with Chinese state-linked CEFC China Energy, which began paying the Bidens millions of dollars for ill-defined services shortly after Joe Biden stepped down as vice president in 2017.
James Biden also engaged in efforts to court Mexico’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.
President Biden’s younger brother, James, has agreed to testify next month in the House impeachment inquiry. NBC Newswire/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
The terms of James’ alleged loan payments to Joe Biden are another likely issue as congressional Republicans investigate whether the president personally benefited from foreign dealings.
At the Chinese company, Hunter and James Biden shared $1 million transferred in March 2017 from a CEFC subsidiary and then split $5.1 million transferred within 10 days of a threatening text message sent by Hunter in July 2017 to an associate based in China, in which he invoked his father and threatened retaliation if a deal was not reached.
Joe Biden allegedly rubbed shoulders with his relatives’ partners in the CEFC deal, including conference twice in May 2017 with another partner, Tony Bobulinski, and was named in an October 2017 email as a participant in the attempted CEFC to buy US natural gas.
The now-defunct CEFC was reputed to be a cog in Beijing’s foreign-inclusive “Belt and Road” initiative, which focused on overseas energy and infrastructure investments to benefit the Chinese government.
Joe Biden joined a meeting in or around March 2017 at the Four Seasons hotel in DC with about 10 CEFC associates, including the company’s president, Ye Jianming, who has since disappeared in his homeland amid of corruption allegations there, Rob Walker, a Biden family associate, told impeachment investigators. last week.
Walker also testified that the Bidens’ initial $1 million from the CEFC was compensation for work done during the Obama-Biden administration.
Bank records acquired by Congress indicate that Joe Biden received payments of $40,000 and $200,000 from his brother after James received the same amounts weeks earlier from a law firm associated with the Biden family, which Democrats say came from Joe Biden.
A $40,000 check from first brother James Biden and his wife, Sara Biden, arrived in Biden’s bank account on Sept. 3, 2017, from what Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said were funds “laundered” in a deal with an energy company linked to the Chinese government. Corbis via Getty Images
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) alleged that the $40,000 transferred to Joe Biden’s bank account on September 3, 2017 came from “laundered” Chinese funds.
James Biden paid Joe Biden $200,000 on March 1, 2018, the same day James received a $200,000 transfer from the troubled rural hospital company Americore, promising to use his political connections to land a Middle Eastern investor, according to bankruptcy filings.
Intrigue has followed James Biden’s business dealings for decades, since his acquisition with Hunter in the early 2000s of the failed investment bank Paradigm.
James Biden supposedly predicted that Paradigm would succeed because “we have people all over the world who want to invest in Joe Biden,” according to a 2021 book by Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger.
James, 74, and his first son, Hunter Biden, 53, involved their powerful relative in several foreign business relationships. AP
In 2006, the SimmonsCooper law firm, associated with wealthy asbestos attorney Jeff Cooper, invested $1 million in the company, the same year Congress considered asbestos reform legislation.
So Sen. Joe Biden played a key role in blocking a change that could have limited funding for legal payments after lobbying by Cooper’s firm.
A spokesman for Joe Biden claimed in 2008 that the money was not tied to the bill and that the Biden family bank returned the investment.
Cooper later partnered with the Biden family on business activities in Mexico during the Obama-Biden administration, including posing for a group photo in 2015 with Mexican guests and Joe Biden at the vice president’s official residence and traveling aboard Air Force Two. for an official trip to 2016. Mexico.
A lawyer for James Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his statement.
The statements 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 U.S. policy to benefit his relatives’ business interests.
Comer, along with two other House committee chairmen, wrote to White House counsel Ed Siskel on Wednesday to demand copies of all drafts of a speech given by Joe Biden in Ukraine’s parliament in December. 2015, to examine allegations that Joe Biden used $1 billion in US aid. forcing Attorney General Viktor Shokin to resign to protect Burisma Holdings, the energy company that paid Hunter Biden a salary of $1 million a year.
Republican committee leaders wrote that the records are in the hands of the National Archives, which informed them that “the White House has refused to allow [the Archives] Provide the Oversight Committee with any documents related to the 2015 Ukraine speech. [and] Relying on Executive Order 13489, the White House extended its review period by 60 days on three separate occasions: September 22, 2023; November 21, 2023; and January 22, 2024.”
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