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 Biden 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 announced Wednesday.

The testimony is set for exactly one week before Hunter appears on Feb. 28.

Republicans are expected to grill James on his role in a lucrative venture with Chinese state-linked CEFC China Energy, which began paying the Bidens millions for ill-defined services beginning shortly after Joe Biden left office as vice president in 2017.

James Biden also was involved 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.

The terms of alleged loan repayments from James to Joe Biden also are a key area of inquiry as congressional Republicans probe whether the president personally benefited from foreign ventures.

Hunter and James Biden shared $1 million transferred in March 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 invoked his father and threatened retribution if an agreed upon deal was not enacted.

Joe Biden allegedly conferred twice in May 2017 with Tony Bobulinski, an American partner in CEFC dealings, and was named in an October 2017 email as a participant in CEFC’s attempt to purchase US natural gas.

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 Jianming, who has since gone missing in his homeland amid corruption allegations from the Chinese government, Biden family associate Rob Walker told impeachment investigators last week.

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 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 asbestos reform legislation.

Then-Senator Joe Biden 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 claimed in 2008 that the money wasn’t linked to the bill and that 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 respond to a request for comment on his deposition.