President Joe Biden’s Brother Didn’t Provide Services to Company That Paid Him: Impeachment Witness...On the same day as one of the payments, James Biden sent the same amount of money to his brother.

President Joe Biden’s brother received multiple payments from a health care company even though there are no records of him performing any work for the money, a witness in the impeachment inquiry against the president told lawmakers.

“What he actually did, I don’t know,” Carol Fox, the trustee of the bankruptcy proceedings for the health care company Americore Health LLC, said in a closed-door interview with U.S. House of Representatives members in December 2023, according to a transcript made public on Feb. 7.

“I did not think that he provided services to the debtors,” Ms. Fox added later.

That belief prompted Ms. Fox to sue Mr. Biden in 2022, accusing him of failing to repay loans that Americore gave him.

Mr. Biden, 74, received $600,000 in wire payments from Americore in 2018, according to a settlement agreement he signed. Mr. Biden’s firm, Lion Hall, received several additional payments in 2017 and 2018.

Ms. Fox said she could not find any records for Mr. Biden’s purported work for Americore and also could not find any documents, such as documents outlining what collateral was put up for the loans, regarding the loans outside of bank records.

“There was one thing that said ‘loan,’ and that’s why this was called a loan, is because of the exhibits that were filed with this complaint,” Ms. Fox said.

According to the complaint, the loans were made after Mr. Biden represented “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.”

Ms. Fox said she did not know where the quoted statements specifically came from but that there are records that explain them, and that she will provide those records to lawmakers in the future.

According to court documents, Mr. Biden did not actually help obtain investment from the Middle East but instead helped Americore obtain “an ill-advised bridge loan from a hedge fund” that negatively impacted Americore, driving it to bankruptcy.

The suit was settled in 2022. The agreement, signed by Mr. Biden, acknowledged the payments but said Mr. Biden and Lion Hall “provided financial and consulting services to Americore and that Americore received reasonably equivalent value for the work and services provided by Biden/Lion Hall.”

Without admitting any liability, Mr. Biden and Lion Hall agreed to pay $350,000 as a settlement payment.

The settlement was entered in U.S. bankruptcy court and reviewed by The Epoch Times.

One of the payments from Americore to Mr. Biden, a wire transfer of $200,000, came on March 1, 2018. That same day, Mr. Biden wrote a $200,000 check to his brother. Mr. Biden and the White House have acknowledged the payment from Mr. Biden to his brother, which came when President Biden was not in office, but have said the money was to repay a loan.

“James Biden wrote this check to Joe Biden as a ‘loan repayment.’ Americore—a distressed company—loaned money to James Biden who then sent it to Joe Biden,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said previously. “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.”

An attorney for Mr. Biden, Paul Fishman, did not respond to a request for comment on Ms. Fox’s testimony.

“The Oversight Committee’s description of the $200,000 check is highly selective and misleading,” Mr. Fishman previously told news outlets in a statement. “The committee has the bank documents that show both the loan Jim received from his brother in January 2018 and the repayment by check six weeks later. At no time did Jim involve his brother in any of his business relationships.”

Ms. Fox was questioned after Republicans approved an impeachment inquiry against President Biden for possible wrongdoing related to his involvement with his relatives as they carried out business schemes across multiple countries.

President Biden has said he never interacted with his family’s business associates but Devon Archer, another witness interviewed in the probe—and who used to work closely with Hunter Biden, the president’s son—told members that President Biden spoke with his family’s associates over the phone, and several times in person during meals in Washington.

Rob Walker, another former associate, recently told lawmakers that the president’s son started working with a Chinese company in 2015 but that payments didn’t come until after President Biden exited as vice president in January 2017, according to Mr. Comer.

Eric Schwerin, who has helped both President Biden and his son with financial matters, also testified that he was not paid by President Biden for carrying out tasks such as paying bills and preparing taxes.

Mr. James Biden, subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee, is scheduled to answer questions under oath and behind closed doors on Feb. 21. Mr. Hunter Biden, after defying a subpoena, is in negotiations to appear, according to lawmakers.

highlancountyexpress.com
12 December 2023
By Paul Sperry
Real Clear Wire

Who is Sara Biden?

Trouble has followed Sara Catherine Jones since she married into the Biden family almost three decades ago.

Not long after her 1995 wedding to Jim Biden, she took a job with one of his brother Joe’s Senate donors, who later accused her of “fraud” and “unjust enrichment,” according to court records reviewed by RealClearInvestigations.

In the years since, she and her husband have been accused of reneging on debts and failing to pay their taxes, court and property records show. Like their nephew, first son Hunter Biden, they have reportedly sold the promise of access to their powerful relative to companies, several of which have gone bankrupt, some of which are tied to foreign countries hostile to the United States.

Now, Sara Jones Biden has emerged as a key figure in the mushrooming Biden foreign influence-peddling scandal.

GOP lawmakers seek to question the 64-year-old licensed attorney as part of their investigation of President Biden for possible impeachable offenses, including bribery. They are especially interested in subpoenaed bank records that include almost a quarter million dollars in checks Sara Biden wrote to her brother-in-law Joe, conspicuously marking them as “loan repayment.” Republicans want to ask her about the origin of those loans and whether checks “were funded by Biden influence-peddling schemes with China.”

“The Committees require you to provide details of these payments and other related matters,” the chairmen of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees said in a joint letter they sent to her last month demanding she make herself available for a transcribed interview. In addition, they sent a subpoena to her husband for testimony and information.

Although Hunter and Jim Biden’s questionable business dealings – and their possible blessing from the president – are drawing increasing scrutiny, Sara Biden has drawn little attention until now. But court records and other documents show she has been a central player in the Biden family business for decades. They show how her and her husband’s desire for a lifestyle they could not quite afford has repeatedly led them to form relationships with shady figures and enterprises that often ended in lawsuits and even criminal investigations.

Looming over it all is Joe Biden. Documents recently obtained by government watchdog America First Legal, under a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal that Sara and Jim’s main business, the Lion Hall Group, shows up in more than 3,735 emails generated by the former Vice President Biden’s office. The sheer volume of communications concerning his brother and sister-in-law’s business appears to contradict Biden’s repeated claims over the years that he was never involved in, or even aware of, his family’s business dealings.

A Match Made in Kentucky-—Sara Biden’s links to Joe Biden date back to the early 1990s, when she landed a committee job with his close personal friend, Sen. Wendell Ford, a Kentucky Democrat. “Sen. Ford has been an important part of our family for a long time,” Joe Biden said after Ford died in 2015. “He gave Sara Jones Biden, from Owensboro, Ky., her first job on the Hill when she graduated from Duke Law School, and that’s how she met my brother Jimmy.”

Jimmy and Sara weren’t just sweethearts; they were also business partners – with a taste for high living. In 1997, Sara and Jim Biden formed consulting firm Lion Hall Group with the help of Joe Biden’s old law partner, David Walsh, who acted as their registered agent, according to incorporation records they filed with the Delaware Department of State.

That same year, they bought an expensive home in the Philadelphia suburbs and struggled to make payments on the $650,000 mortgage, records show, even though a longtime Democratic fundraiser for then-Sen. Biden, Joel Boyarsky, loaned them as much as $200,000. In 1998, the IRS filed its first lien against their home to collect $145,000 in unpaid taxes.

In 2000, they borrowed $353,000 from another Biden donor – Leonard Barrack, a Philadelphia attorney who a few years earlier had agreed to hire Sara Biden at Jim’s urging for $300,000 per year, according to court and other records. Barrack would soon regret helping them out.

According to a lawsuit he filed against Sara Biden four years later, Barrack said Jim had convinced him that by hiring Sara as a partner, the Bidens would be able to attract clients to his law firm through their political connections.

“Jim Biden assured Barrack that he would be able to generate business for the Barrack Law Firm through his family name and his resemblance to his brother, United States Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware,” according to the 2004 complaint filed in Philadelphia County, Pa.

Instead, the document said, Sara Biden developed business opportunities for Lion Hall Group, where she served as president, a potential conflict of interest she allegedly never disclosed to Barrack.

The law firm, also known as Barrack, Rodos & Bacine, further alleged that she used its resources, including a travel budget, for personal benefit. The lawsuit said Sara Biden spent almost $250,000 to travel with her husband to Hawaii and Alaska and across Europe, including England, Ireland, France, and Italy. They even brought their son, Nicholas (now 26), and a nanny on some of the “lavish” trips.

“Contrary to Sara Biden’s representations, none of the foregoing trips generated any business for the Barrack Law Firm,” the suit stated. “The Bidens never intended to generate business opportunities for the Barrack Law Firm during their travels, using the trips instead for personal pleasure and to develop opportunities for Lion Hall.”

The couple also allegedly received a total of $500,000 in loans before Sara left the firm in 2003. These salary advances were never repaid, according to the legal complaint. The case, which charged Sara and Lion Hall Group with “fraud,” “unjust enrichment,” and “breach of contract,” was eventually settled. The terms are undisclosed.

Sara Biden did not respond to requests for comment. However, in a law publication profile she asserted that she “co-founded” the Barrack law firm’s “institutional development and claims monitoring program.” Barrack apparently was unaware she was pursuing other outside interests while allegedly looting his firm.

snip

Paul Sperry is an investigative reporter for RealClearInvestigations. He is also a longtime media fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Sperry was previously the Washington bureau chief for Investor’s Business Daily, and his work has appeared in the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Houston Chronicle, among other major publications.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.