James Biden, the brother of Joe Biden, has been tied to a foreign lobbying scheme involving the government of Qatar and a now-bankrupt hospital chain.
Biden brandished his family connections in his efforts to attract foreign investment in the distressed health care company Americore, Politico reported.
At the time, Qatar was under a painful blockade from its Arab neighbors and eager for influence in the United States. Biden's brother Joe Biden had just finished his vice presidency.
The details of the scheme were spilled by a former business partner of James Biden, Michael Lewitt, who told a bankruptcy court that two companies were involved in the fundraising effort. Both companies were partially owned by members of the Qatari government.
Biden's wife Sara emailed an executive from one of those companies, Platinum Group, on March 10, 2018 with a fundraising pitch that described James Biden as "Brother and Campaign Finance Chair of former Vice President Joe Biden.”
A month later, the Platinum executive emailed Jim and lavished praise on his "flawless" meeting with Qatari officials.
Biden and his business partners had set out to raise $30 million for Americore by leveraging Biden's name, but they ran into legal barriers with transferring money. A former Americore executive said there were discussions about moving gold bars across a Middle Eastern border.
Biden became defensive when Americore's CEO, Grant White, began asking questions about the promised funding.
“I agreed to go to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and China (at my own expense),” Biden wrote.
Sometime in 2018, Biden traveled to Qatar with Lewitt. Qatar’s then-finance minister, Ali Sharif Al Emadi, was convicted this year of laundering $5 billion and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The Biden family's dense tangle of foreign business dealings is the focus of an impeachment probe that has stalled.
James Biden told House impeachment investigators in February that Americore paid him $600,000 to arrange loans to the company while it was waiting for the foreign investment he promised.
Biden said he earned the money with honest work, but Americore characterized the payment as a loan made out on the mistaken impression that Biden's name would "open doors" to funding in the Middle East.
In March 2018, Biden sent his brother Joe a $200,00 check for "loan repayment" on the same day Americore sent an equivalent amount to James and his wife.
