Scandals Where Biden Used His Political Influence to Gain Advantages for His Family Members (1973-2017)

Scandals Where Biden Used His Political Influence to Gain Advantages for His Family Members (1973-2017)

Overview

Joe Biden’s Brother James Receives Unusually Generous Loans While Joe Biden Sits on the Senate Banking Committee In 1973 Joe Biden’s younger brother James, who had served as the chief fundraiser for Joe’s Senate campaign in ’72, received a series of unusually generous loans that enabled him to raise enough capital to open a nightclub […]


Joe Biden’s Brother James Receives Unusually Generous Loans While Joe Biden Sits on the Senate Banking Committee

In 1973 Joe Biden’s younger brother James, who had served as the chief fundraiser for Joe’s Senate campaign in ’72, received a series of unusually generous loans that enabled him to raise enough capital to open a nightclub in Delaware. What made the loans so unusual was the fact that James, at that time, was a salesman with no entrepreneurial experience and a net worth of less than $10,000. Eyebrows were further raised by the fact that Joe Biden had just been appointed to the Senate Banking Committee. “No sooner was freshman lawmaker Joe Biden seated on the Senate Banking Committee,” Politico reports, “than James became the beneficiary of business loans that were described … as unusually generous because of the relatively large amount of money he was able to borrow with little or no collateral and a lack of relevant prior experience.”

The first series of loans to James Biden — totaling $165,000 — were provided by Wilmington’s Farmers Bank. When Biden’s nightclub eventually ran up debts totaling more than $500,000 by 1975, he and his business partners applied for a $300,000 bailout loan from First Pennsylvania Bank. Only after the incumbent governor of Pennsylvania made a recommendation on the nightclub’s behalf, did the bailout loan come through for Mr. Biden. The money did not last long, however. By 1977, James Biden’s debt exceeded $700,000 and he was forced to surrender the club to creditors.

“During the same time period James Biden was receiving the extensive lines of credit,” reports Breitbart.com, “Joe Biden was sitting on the Senate Banking Committee, which had purview over the financial sector. A specific jurisdiction of the committee was the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which provides bailouts to banks if they should become over leveraged. Such a bailout was required by Farmers Bank in 1976 when it nearly collapsed after all the troublesome loans [it made], like those to James Biden,… could not be repaid. The bank only survived after the FDIC and the state of Delaware threw it a lifeline by purchasing a majority of the problematic loans.”

A number of the bank’s leading executives were subsequently indicted for fraud and other financial crimes. Additional Delaware banking authorities and the elected officials who supposedly regulated them soon became embroiled in the scandal as well. “A Delaware banking commissioner was found to have received a loan from Farmers [Bank] while overseeing its finances, an apparent violation of federal law,” Politico reports. “Separately … The DOJ also scrutinized unusual loans made by Farmers, including the Biden loan.”

A few months after the height of the controversy, Joe Biden left the Senate Banking Committee in order to join the more prestigious Senate Judiciary Committee.

Trial Lawyers Enlist James Biden’s Assistance in a Multibillion-Dollar Tobacco Case

In the 1990s, a group of Mississippi trial lawyers enlisted the help of Joe Biden’s younger brother James Biden in securing congressional support for a mega-settlement in a tobacco case. A decade later, those same Mississippi attorneys hosted a fundraiser for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. They also “accept[ed] an invitation to accompany Joe to a high-profile Washington dinner,” reports Politico, “while they simultaneously prepared to launch a lobbying firm with James and his wife, Sara.”

Joe Biden’s Sister Steers Campaign Money to Her Political Consulting Firm

When Joe Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, was a senior partner in the political messaging firm Slade White & Company, she served as the campaign manager for her brother’s presidential campaigns. During the 2008 campaign alone, she steered $2.5 million from “Citizens for Biden” and “Biden for President Inc.” to Slade White & Company.

James Biden’s Construction Consulting Firm Receives $1.5 Billion in Government Contracts for Projects with Which It Has No Past Experience

In 2010, the Obama administration tasked Vice President Joe Biden with the responsibility of overseeing the allocation of government contracts for construction projects aimed at rebuilding various decimated regions of post-war Iraq. In November of that year, Kevin Justice, a longtime Biden family friend who served as president of the Philadelphia-based construction consulting firm HillStone International, visited the White House to meet with Michele Smith, a top Biden aide. Less than three weeks later, HillStone announced that Joe Biden’s younger brother, James Biden, would be joining the firm as its executive vice president. Six months after that, HillStone received a $1.5 billion government contract to build more than 100,000 homes in Iraq, even though the firm had no experience whatsoever in handling projects of that magnitude. When HillStone eventually backed out of the deal because it was incapable of seeing it through, the firm nonetheless managed to secure a $22 million construction contract with the U.S. State Department in 2012.

Frank Biden Is Linked to Solar Power Projects Receiving Millions in Taxpayer Loans from the Obama Administration, Despite Having No Experience in That Field

Shortly after President Obama took office in 2009, his administration sought to mend U.S. relations with Costa Rica following a period of acrimony that had existed during the George W. Bush years. Vice President Biden, who had longstanding ties to the Caribbean region dating back to his tenure in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was put in charge of this Costa Rica initiative. At that point, his youngest brother, Frank Biden, began looking for real-estate opportunities in that country.

In March 2009 Joe Biden visited Costa Rica. Just a few months later, Costa Rica News announced that Frank Biden had entered into a multilateral partnership “to reform Real Estate in Latin America” with a developer named Craig Williamson and a posh resort village — expected to include thousands of homes, a world-class golf course, and a number of casinos — which was slated for construction in Costa Rica. The Costa Rican government, knowing of Frank Biden’s connection to the White House, announced that it was “eager to cooperate.”

But in order to carry out the massive construction project, Costa Rica would have to update its electrical grid. Despite having no experience at all in the energy sector, Frank Biden and his company, Sun Fund Americas, entered into a partnership with the Costa Rican National Power and Light Company (CNFL) to construct a solar power complex in the northwest region of the country. The project specifically earmarked more than $6.5 million in taxpayer-backed loans that the Obama administration’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) approved in 2015.

The Biden family’s influence over U.S. activities in the Caribbean did not end there. In June 2014 the Obama administration announced that it was putting Joe Biden in charge of its new Caribbean Energy Security Initiative (CESI), which would use American taxpayer dollars to support additional energy-sustainability projects in the region. One of those projects was the construction of a 20-megawatt solar power plant in Jamaica, for which OPIC had approved a $47.5 million loan. Like the aforementioned solar power project in Costa Rica, the Jamaica contract likewise went to Sun Fund Americas. All told, Frank Biden’s Caribbean projects benefited from more than $54 million in U.S. taxpayer loans during the eight years of Obama-Biden.

Hunter Biden’s Firms Scored Big Business Deals with People & Entities Tied to the Governments of Kazakhstan, China, and Russia

There is clear evidence that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and his business partner, Devon Archer, used their involvement with the Burnham Financial Group, an asset-management corporation which they co-chaired, to make deals with foreign governments and oligarchs. One of those oligarchs was Nurlan Abduov, an associate of Kenges Rakishev, son-in-law of the former vice prime minister of Kazakhstan. Specifically, Hunter Biden regularly received funds from an account that was funded in part by a firm run by Rakishev in 2014.

Burnham Financial Group also had business dealings with two Chinese companies, Kirin Global Enterprises Limited and Harvest Global Investors, both of which were linked to the government in Beijing

In addition, Burnham had a financial relationship with the billionaire Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, who had extensive political connections in Moscow and ties to Russian organized crime, According to Devon Archer, Baturina invested some $200 million into “various investment funds” with which Archer was involved.

Moreover, Burnham was involved in a fraudulent bond scheme that stole at least $60 million from eleven labor-union pension funds and the poorest Indian tribe in America, the Oglala Sioux. In May 2016, Archer was arrested and charged with “orchestrating a scheme to defraud investors and a Native American tribal entity of tens of millions of dollars.”

Joe Biden Aggressively Promotes His Son-in-Law’s Startup Investment Consultancy

In June 2011, Vice President Biden aggressively promoted StartUp Health, a fledgling New York City-based investment consultancy whose mission was to provide technical and relationship advice to new companies in exchange for a stake in their business revenues. The firm was established by three siblings from Philadelphia: (a) CEO and co-founder Steven Krein, (b) chief strategy officer Bari Krein, and (c) chief medical officer Dr. Howard Krein, who also happened to be the husband of Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley.

Though StartUp Health barely had even a website in place as of June 2011, two of the company’s executives were ushered into the Oval Office of the White House that month for a face-to-face meeting with President Obama and Vice President Biden. The following day, the company was featured at a large healthcare tech conference run by the US Department of Health and Human Services. Over the next four years, StartUp Health executives became regular visitors to the White House. And Joe Biden continued to personally help his son-in-law promote StartUp Health at a number of appearances which the vice president made through the end of his tenure in the White House.

 | 
© Copyright 2024, DiscoverTheNetworks.org