It’s Washington’s newest guessing game: Who is the unnamed Biden family member who got proceeds from a $3 million wire to Hunter Biden associate John “Rob” Walker weeks after Joe Biden left the vice presidency in 2017?
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) first revealed Monday that bank records obtained via subpoena implicate a “new Biden family member” in the panel’s probe of the first son’s alleged influence-peddling scheme.
Comer is expected to reveal the person’s name at some point, but has not yet announced specific plans to do so, leaving the door open to speculation about who else could have been on the receiving end.
The Kentucky Republican told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday that the records obtained from Bank of America show that in March 2017, Walker received a $3 million wire transfer from two individuals with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, which he then divvied up to multiple Biden family members.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) won’t say yet who the new Biden family member being targeted by the Oversight Committee is.
“The very next day after that wire was received, the Walker account started transferring money into three different Biden family members’ accounts, including a new Biden family member that’s never before been identified as someone being involved in the influence peddling scheme,” Comer told Hannity.
On Tuesday, the Oversight Committee chairman told Fox News host Bill Hemmer that investigators are curious about what work the three Biden family members did to justify receiving that money from Walker and what the purpose was of the original $3 million wire.
Comer noted that the $3 million transfer was “just the first wire that we’ve actually been able to obtain bank records on. There are many, many more.”
And he emphasized that the scope of the panel’s investigation goes far beyond the president’s son.
“The media says, ‘Well, this is a Hunter Biden investigation.’ This is an investigation of Joe Biden. And we’re investigating the Biden family and again, after this new batch of information, it expands,” Comer said on “America’s Newsroom.”
“There are more family members involved in this than just the president’s son. And what they’ve said in the media, ‘Oh, this was for business.’ We can’t identify any business. It appears it went into their personal account,” Comer revealed, adding that his “theory” is that the Biden family was running an influence peddling operation, possibly without being properly registered as foreign agents.
Joe Biden has previously denied ever talking to his son or brother about their business interests.
In his 2020 book, “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,” investigative journalist Peter Schweizer highlighted four Biden family members in addition to Hunter that have apparently profited off their family name, as well as the connections Joe Biden has made during his nearly 50 years in politics.
Schweizer highlighted first brother James Biden’s work with HillStone International, a subsidiary of construction management firm Hill International.
James Biden, according to Schweizer, joined the firm as an executive vice president just three weeks after HillStone International President Kevin Justice visited the White House in November 2010 and met with an adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden.
James Biden appeared to have little or no background in housing construction, but after he joined the firm, HillStone secured numerous contracts from the federal government for dozens of projects in the US, Iraq, Puerto Rico, Mozambique, and elsewhere.
James Biden, the president’s brother, reportedly leveraged his famous last name to get construction firm Hill International out of a business deal with the Saudi government.
Last month, a sworn affidavit claimed that the now-first brother also helped Hill International resolve a decades-old dispute with the Saudi government.
James Biden allegedly told a private investigator that he was hired to handle Hill’s “business development” and had been assigned to help with the company’s interests in Saudi Arabia.
The first brother added that he was often tapped to represent Hill in meetings “because, of course, the name didn’t hurt” and that he had attended a February 2012 meeting with Saudi officials “because of his position and relationship” with his older brother.
The private investigator, former Treasury Department official Thomas Sullivan, noted that after speaking with James, the first brother’s wife Sara walked him to his car and revealed that her husband and his older brother Joe were very close, and that according to Sullivan, “they told each other everything.”
Sara Biden also told Sullivan that “he doesn’t like us talking to people,” the ex-Treasury man recalled, an apparent reference to Joe.
Ashley Biden’s husband, Dr. Howard Krein, launched his StartUp Health investment consultancy when his father-in-law was vice president.
Schweizer’s book also singles out Joe Biden’s son-in-law, Dr. Howard Krein, who is married to first daughter Ashley Biden, and launched his StartUp Health investment consultancy when his father-in-law was vice president.
The company was later featured at a large healthcare tech conference run by the Department of Health and Human Services, and StartUp Health executives became frequent visitors to the White House while Joe Biden was Barack Obama’s No. 2, according to Schweizer.
Frank Biden, the president’s youngest brother, runs a solar energy company, Sun Fund Americas, that reportedly signed a deal with the Ministry of Public Education in Costa Rica to develop renewable energy in the country, where Joe Biden also acted as the Obama administration’s point man. Sun Fund has also benefited from US-government backed Overseas Private Investment Corporation loans for renewable energy projects.
Finally, Valerie Biden Owens, Joe’s younger sister who ran all of his Senate campaigns and his presidential runs in 1988 and 2008, was also a senior partner the political messaging firm Joe Slade White & Company, according to Schweizer, and the firm received large fees from those campaigns, including $2.5 million alone from Joe Biden’s 2008 presidential bid.
James Biden has previously been identified by Comer as a subject of the Oversight Committee’s investigation, but neither the other family members mentioned by Schweizer nor Sara Biden have been mentioned by the Kentucky Republican.
In 2019, Joe Biden insisted that he has “never talked with my son or my brother or anyone else — even distant family — about their business interests. Period.”
* Article from: The New York Post
