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Frank Biden’s role in Florida law firm complicates White House ethics message

By Annie Linskey
Washington Post
February 3, 2021

pic——Frank Biden, the younger brother of President Biden, at his Palm Beach County, Fla., home in 2011. (Joe Cavaretta / Sun Sentinel/Zaumapress.com)

Shortly after his brother won the presidency, Frank Biden, who works for a Florida law firm called Berman Law Group, spoke to a local television station about his tight connection with Joe Biden.

“We’ve all always been close,” Frank Biden told WPBF, saying he had talked to the president-elect just the day before, for his birthday. “But we’re closer now.”

Viewers could hardly miss Frank Biden’s employer, since he was wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with a “TBT” logo, his firm’s shorthand for “The Berman Team.” And in Frank’s case, the shirt also spelled out another meaning for TBT: “The Biden Team.”

As President Biden enters his third week in office, the firm where his brother is a “non-attorney senior adviser” has aggressively touted its ties to power — emphasizing the brothers’ connection, declaring that their values are aligned, highlighting Biden’s policies as it advertises its services and generally playing up Frank Biden’s role even on cases in which he is not involved.

The White House, which boasts of its strict ethics policy, has yet to publicly issue rules for Biden’s family members, even though his relatives’ business dealings have created problems for him before. A White House official said a process is in place, involving the counsel’s office and representatives of the family, to address potential conflicts of interest as they arise. But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a matter that has not yet been announced, declined to provide details.

As Biden seeks to break dramatically from the mingling of family and government that characterized Donald Trump’s presidency, Frank Biden’s activities could muddy the message. At issue is his work at the small Boca Raton, Fla.-based firm, which long focused on personal injury cases but in recent years has sought to expand its horizons and play on a bigger field, in part by hiring Frank Biden in 2018.

President Biden arrives back at the White House on Jan. 29. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)
After Biden’s inauguration in January, Berman Law Group moved swiftly to capitalize on his immigration policy shifts. In a social media post, it highlighted the president’s halt to deportations while pitching a “free consultation” to anyone seeking its services. The firm deleted those posts Sunday, hours after a reporter from The Washington Post inquired about them.

In a newspaper ad that ran on Inauguration Day, Berman Law Group boasted about a class-action lawsuit it had filed against sugar cane growers, stressing that the case came “against the backdrop of incoming President Joseph Biden Jr.’s commitment to environmental and social justice, a value shared by his brother and Berman Law Group senior adviser, Frank Biden.”

Several months earlier, as Biden was locking up the Democratic nomination, the firm filed two class-action lawsuits against China for its role in the coronavirus pandemic — in both cases, noting Frank Biden’s role at the firm when announcing the suits, although a partner said he was not involved in them.

In what one of the partners described to Newsmax as “a multitrillion-dollar lawsuit,” the firm demanded to know whether a Chinese weapons lab created the virus. The suit faces long odds, legal experts say, but it has significantly raised the firm’s profile.

Frank Biden did not respond to an email seeking comment.

A White House spokesman said the president is committed to ethical behavior by his family as well as his staff.

“President Biden has set and maintained the highest ethical standards for himself, his administration, and those around him, and he has pledged an ‘absolute wall’ with any family member’s private business interests,” said the spokesman, Michael Gwin. “Any implication to the contrary is flatly untrue and unsupported by the facts.”

Gwin added that Frank Biden has not consulted with his brother on any business matter and that no one from Berman Law Group has contacted the Biden team in regard to its legal activities.

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