James Biden is set to appear for a closed-door interview Wednesday on Capitol Hill, where House Republicans are expected to grill him on his past business dealings as part of their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
The president’s younger brother was once involved in China-based ventures with his nephew, Joe Biden’s son Hunter, and in shady dealings with a healthcare company that later went bankrupt.
Republicans have signaled in letters to James Biden that they will question him on those topics as they continue to examine whether Joe Biden used his political influence when he was vice president to help enrich his family.
James Biden is expected to receive questions about a string of payments totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars that were wired to his company in 2017. The payments came from Hunter Biden associate Rob Walker and originated from an energy company intertwined with the Chinese government, according to bank records obtained by the House Oversight Committee. The payments, Walker told Congress this month, were part of a joint venture among him, James and Hunter Biden, and the Chinese energy company to invest in projects in the United States and elsewhere.
Tony Bobulinski, another former associate with whom James and Hunter Biden worked in 2017 before he had a falling out with them, testified to Congress this month that Joe Biden’s name was central to their China-related work.
“And I was asking [James Biden], ‘How are you doing it? It doesn’t make any sense. Aren’t you guys concerned that if Joe does run for President of the United States in the future that you guys are doing business directly with the Chinese?’” Bobulinski said.
“He looks at me and sort of chuckles and says, ‘Plausible deniability,’” Bobulinski said.
In a more widely scrutinized incident, James Biden received over half a million dollars in 2018 from a healthcare company on the promise that he would help the company, called Americore, secure investments from the Middle East.
The company later went bankrupt, and a trustee sought to claw back that money from James Biden, court filings showed.
However, newly unearthed documents, according to Politico, reveal that James Biden and other Biden family members were far more involved with Americore, whose collapse has led to various lawsuits and “[wreaked] havoc in rural communities.”
James Biden helped Americore obtain regulatory approvals and repeatedly invoked Joe Biden’s name while working with the company, Politico found, adding that James Biden’s wife, Sara, and nephew Hunter also had involvement with the company.
While Republicans have turned up little evidence conclusively showing Joe Biden profited off his family members’ controversial ventures, the Oversight Committee did uncover that Joe Biden received two checks when he was a private citizen in 2017 and 2018 from his brother that were labeled as loan repayments.
Bank records showed James Biden used money he made from a deal with a Chinese company to issue one of the checks and money he made from Americore to issue the other.
Democrats have highlighted that a bank account associated with Joe Biden had issued payments for the exact amounts on the checks to James Biden, which they say reinforced the notion that the two checks were legitimate loan repayments and not a sign that Joe Biden financially benefited from his family’s business deals.
The purpose of the loans remains unknown, however.
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James Biden’s scheduled interview comes after Republicans subpoenaed him in November to testify. Unlike the highly public and combative back-and-forth they had with Hunter Biden, who is scheduled to appear next week, James Biden and his counsel were largely cooperative with Republicans about negotiating the terms of his appearance, according to senior GOP aides familiar with the matter.
James Biden’s interview is set to begin at 10 a.m.