President Joe Biden’s brother James spent hours testifying to the House Oversight and Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Feb. 21. The closed door interview was part of the impeachment inquiry into the president. Republicans are trying to prove that Biden benefited from his family’s business dealings while he was vice president.
“I have had a 50-year career in a variety of business ventures,” James Biden said, addressing the overall inquiry. “Joe Biden has never had any involvement or any direct or indirect financial interest in those activities. None.”
“I have always kept my professional life separate from our close personal relationship,” James Biden said in an opening statement. “I never asked my brother to take any official action on behalf of me, my business associates, or anyone else.”
The president’s younger brother also directly addressed an accusation the committee made in November.
The committee released bank documents it said showed President Biden received $40,000 in laundered money from China in 2017. The committee published bank statements and a check which traced the money from the Chinese company CEFC, through a shell company, to James Biden’s bank account and then to Joe Biden via a check which stated loan repayment in the memo.
“They were short-term loans that I received from Joe when he was a private citizen, and I repaid them within weeks,” James Biden said in his opening statement. “He had no information at all about the source of the funds I used to repay him. The complete explanation is that Joe lent me money and I repaid him as soon as I had the funds to do so.”
Republicans are still casting doubt on James Biden’s explanation.
“We asked what exactly did both Jim and Hunter do to earn the millions of dollars that they earned from CEFC and he said that they were always out scouting around trying to find them investments,” Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said on Newsmax. “And the next obvious question was, ‘Well did you find them any investments?’ No.”
Democrats are calling for the impeachment inquiry to end.
“Yesterday’s interview served only to corroborate the mountain of evidence that has proven time and time again that President Biden has committed no wrongdoing,” Oversight Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said in a statement.
This isn’t the last of the Biden family’s business dealings. Hunter Biden is scheduled to testify Wednesday, Feb. 28.
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