How Joe Biden’s Kin Profited Off the Family Name. ‘The Big Guy Is Calling Me.’
James and Frank Biden have for decades leveraged their brother’s clout in their business pursuits
By Annie Linskeyand James T. Areddy
Certain Biden family members’ yearslong pattern of trading on the powerful name is at the center of an impeachment inquiry by House Republicans that got under way with a committee hearing Thursday.
Lawmakers allege they unfairly profited from the elder Biden’s political clout, and the inquiry will examine whether the president also benefited from or otherwise played a role in the financial endeavors of his kin.
The White House and Democrats have denounced the inquiry as a political stunt aimed at unjustly tarnishing the president. White House spokesman Ian Sams said House Republicans have continually lied about the president, failed to find evidence of what they claim and uncovered no evidence of wrongdoing.
The Journal’s examination of President Biden’s relatives’ dealings didn’t turn up evidence that he benefited from the business enterprises that relied on his name. But on at least a few occasions before his presidency, Joe Biden was more present in his family’s business dealings than he or they have acknowledged.
Joe Biden is the oldest of four siblings in an expansive family.
His brother James Biden, along with his son Hunter Biden, built ties to a Chinese oil company and ran a hedge fund. James also worked for a firm attempting to build homes in Iraq.
His youngest brother, Francis Biden, sometimes interrupted meetings by saying he had to take a call from “the Big Guy.” A Florida-based law firm that employs Francis ran a newspaper ad trumpeting its relationship with the president’s brother, an episode that drew White House rebuke.
Hunter Biden developed overseas relationships, including a board seat on a Ukrainian energy company Burisma that paid him up to $1 million annually.
Rosie Ettenheim/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Family members would take phone calls from Joe Biden during their business meetings and occasionally include him in the conversations, a practice that was interpreted by some who witnessed it as an attempt to show off the connection to power, according to former business associates. The conversations that involved Joe Biden were largely limited to pleasantries, according to those who heard them. White House officials have said that Joe Biden regularly calls members of his family to check in.
There aren’t rules that prevent politically connected families from leaning on their name to advance their careers, and other White House families have been criticized for doing so, most recently during the Trump administration.
At times, business partners were ultimately disappointed when the Biden name failed to unlock access or markets, leaving a trail of legal proceedings and paperwork outlining the grievances of miffed former business associates. A number of the ventures failed, never got off the ground or landed in court.
A spokesperson for James Biden said he hadn’t behaved inappropriately. “Jim Biden has been an entrepreneur and executive for more than five decades and is clear that he always conducted himself ethically and honorably in all his business dealings,” the spokesperson said.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell has said that Hunter Biden wasn’t in business with his father and that any interactions Joe Biden might have had with Hunter’s business associates was “small talk.” Francis Biden didn’t respond to emails or phone calls.
Deals that traded on the Biden name include one venture with a healthcare company that James Biden promised could be expanded on the basis of Joe Biden’s strength with unions and government agencies, according to a lawsuit naming James Biden as a defendant. In another deal, James Biden was an executive at a firm attempting to build 100,000 homes in Iraq as Joe Biden held the vice presidency.
In some of the deals, including in Ukraine and China, a tycoon seeking to burnish a reputation would build a relationship with a Biden, sometimes hoping to discourage regulatory scrutiny.
Other times, family members engaged in more conventional name-dropping. Frank Biden, as the president’s youngest brother Francis is known, was hired by the Illinois-based industrial manufacturing firm
Federal Signal
Corp. to help connect the company with Florida lawmakers. During a weekly call, Frank Biden, 69 years old, would frequently interrupt the meeting and say he had to take a call from “the Big Guy,” as he put it.
The then-vice president’s brother would say: “I’ve got to put you on hold, the Big Guy is calling me,” recalled Matthew Brady, then working at Federal Signal. “I thought, ‘OK, great, your brother is the vice president.’ ”
The same day that Joe Biden was inaugurated as president, the Florida-based law firm that employs Frank Biden as a member of its executive leadership team ran a newspaper adthat included a photo of Frank Biden and quoted him trumpeting his brother.
The episode led to a rebuke from the White House; its press secretary said the president’s name shouldn’t be used in connection with any commercial activities.
Some of the most complex and potentially lucrative endeavors have involved the president’s brother James, who also goes by Jim and Jimmy. He handled the fundraising in Joe Biden’s first Senate campaign and picked out the décor for his Oval Office.
James Biden, 74, joined with his nephew Hunter Biden—by their accounts, they are best friends—as they built ties to a Chinese oil company called CEFC China Energy in the months after Joe Biden left the vice presidency.
Banking transactions published in 2020 by congressional Republicans linked James and Hunter Biden to money from the Chinese oil company, alleging it covered some of their credit card spending and was the ultimate source of 20 money transfers totaling at least $1,398,999 to the Lion Hall Group, a consulting firm run by James Biden.
Seeking union funds
The family name helped James and Hunter Biden when they took over hedge fund Paradigm Global Advisors in 2006, before Joe Biden was gearing up for his second presidential bid.When James and Hunter asked Wall Street veteran Charles Provini to serve as the fund’s president, he saw the business model up close. While the uncle and nephew team knew little about running a hedge fund, “the story was that they had relationships with different unions and that they would anticipate being able to get union funding or union investments into the fund,” Provini said in an interview with the Journal. The pair said these relationships flowed from Joe Biden’s political career, Provini said.
Joe Biden would occasionally join business calls Provini had with James and Hunter Biden. “I was a little star-struck at the time perhaps,” Provini said. “I think most of the things that he was saying were just pleasantries,” he said. “It might have been for credibility.” Topics included Provini’s work running the fund and a lawsuit that had been filed against James and Hunter Biden related to the company, he said.
Provini later sued Paradigm, claiming the company owed him roughly $1 million for his service. Paradigm didn’t respond directly to the allegations in court, but moved to dismiss the case on a technical question. The judge agreed with Paradigm and dismissed the case.
100,000 Iraqi homes
James Biden’s connections didn’t always pay off for the companies that hired him. In 2010, publicly traded construction services firm Hill International named him executive vice president of a new joint venture, HillStone International, which aimed to build low-cost concrete housing in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.Separately, Hill International was becoming active in Washington as part of a legal and political strategy to compel Saudi Arabia to pay around $100 million the company claimed was owed for work many years earlier on the construction of a desalination plant there.
Hill International touted James’s political connections when he joined the group, noting his “nearly 40 years of experience dealing with principals in business, political, legal and financial circles across the nation and internationally.” The press release also mentioned James Biden’s role in his brother’s first political campaign.
The group landed $1.5 billion in contracts, as a subcontractor from a South Korean company, to build and manage 100,000 homes in Iraq while then-Vice President Joe Biden played an active role in U.S. policy toward that country. The Iraq deal stood to benefit the vice president’s brother in a nation receiving U.S. aid and then hosting about 50,000 American troops.
But construction never happened. In the fourth quarter of 2012, Hill International said it took a $1 million charge to terminate the operations of HillStone. “I think Jim was very good at getting meetings set up and getting people to return his phone calls, and it ended there,” David L. Richter, who was president of Hill International when James Biden joined the group, told the Journal. Asked if James made it clear in business meetings who his brother is, Richter said he is only aware of one family named Biden.
It wasn’t clear how much James Biden earned from his work with the company, or how much, if anything, was paid out under the contract.
“If the question is, What did Jim Biden accomplish for us? The answer is nothing,” Richter said, adding that the HillStone business model never generated any revenue. Hill International didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Healthcare hiccups
James Biden’s famous name was offered as a legal shield when he partnered with Americore Health, a network of rural hospitals that proposed expanding the footprint of two small firms that developed a proprietary treatment model for addiction and mental health.James Biden was among investors pushing for fast expansion, but as the venture bought up healthcare providers without receiving expected money from investors, meeting payroll became difficult and threats of lawsuits emerged, according to a lawsuit filed by the firms expecting investments.
“Don’t worry every time someone threatens to sue you,” Michael Lewitt, a James Biden associate, wrote to Michael Frey, the founder of one of the small firms, according to a 2019 text message between the two men. “You’re with us now nobody is gonna touch you.” Frey said it was his understanding that he and his company were “ ‘protected’ because of Jim Biden’s connections,” according to a 2019 lawsuit.
The text became public as part of that 2019 lawsuit claiming fraud, filed by investors in the rural hospital network, that named James Biden as a defendant. Neither Frey nor Lewitt responded to requests for comment.
In bringing the lawsuit, Diverse Medical Management and Azzam Medical Services alleged James Biden and other principals at Americore Health committed fraud during a lengthy process aimed at investing $7 million in the plaintiffs’ businesses.
Affidavits filed by the plaintiffs alleged that James Biden referred to his brother’s political standing during negotiations. James Biden pledged that the smaller firms’ healthcare model “would play an integral role in healthcare policy at the highest levels of the United States government,” according to the July 2019 court filing.
In an affidavit, Mohannad F. Azzam, founder of Azzam and chief medical officer of Diverse Medical, claimed that James Biden in a late 2018 phone call referred to his brother’s connections with labor unions and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Though at the time Joe Biden held no political office, James Biden said those connections were assurance that Diverse Medical’s business model could be expanded nationwide and its business expenses would be underwritten “on the Biden’s family name,” according to Azzam.
In a response, James Biden and fellow defendants said Diverse Medical and Azzam misrepresented the quality of their business and owed the defendants $750,000. The suggestion James Biden asserted political connections was taken out of context, the defendants said.
The lawsuit was settled in 2020. In 2019, Americore Health filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Azzam and his companies didn’t respond to questions sent through a lawyer.
‘The brand’
The most scrutinized Biden-family deals have been the ones struck by Hunter Biden in Ukraine and in China.Hunter Biden received millions of dollars in exchange for access to what Hunter Biden and at least one of his business associates have referred to as the Biden “brand.” The Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid him up to $1 million annually to be on its board from early 2014 to 2019, when it was under regulatory scrutiny.
In July, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability questioned Devon Archer, one of Hunter Biden’s former associates who overlapped with him on Burisma’s board. Archer said that Hunter Biden was selling “an illusion of access to his father.” In his testimony, Archer repeatedly referred to the Biden name as “the brand.”
One of their arrangements was with a Chinese private-equity firm, Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management, or BHR.
The House Oversight Committee this week said it has obtained bank records that showed Hunter Biden in mid-2019 received $260,000 in wire transfers from principals at BHR, calling into question a statement Hunter Biden released through his lawyer later that year that said he had invested in the firm but suggested he never earned money from it. The committee said the Chinese wires listed Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home as the beneficiary address. The BHR principals didn’t respond to questions.
Lowell, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, said that the money represented loans to Hunter secured with his shareholding and that the Delaware address was used on the wires because it was “his only permanent address at the time.”
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To what extent should the activities of politicians’ families be scrutinized? Join the conversation below.On roughly 20 occasions during his association with Archer, Hunter Biden would put his father on the phone with business associates, Archer said. The president phones his son—a recovering addict—frequently to check in.
Archer testified that Joe Biden never brought up the details of business deals, but stuck to pleasantries, including comments about the weather.
Asked by a reporter in August about these calls, President Biden said: “I never talked business with anybody” and accused the reporter of asking a “lousy question.”
How Joe Biden’s Kin Profited Off the Family Name. ‘The Big Guy Is Calling Me.’
James and Frank Biden have for decades leveraged their brother’s clout in their business pursuits.
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