What We Know About Jim Biden So Far

Jim Biden has operated under the radar, as I commented yesterday, largely because no trove of documents equivalent to Hunter's laptop has surfaced over his own business dealings. Instead, so far, the best we've had is a series of anecdotes.

The earliest was covered in 2019 by Politico as Joe's initial 2020 campaign began to falter -- once he gained momentum, though, corporate media dropped these stories. But before then, they covered Jim's and Hunter's acquisition of Paradigm Global Advisers:

In the late summer of 2006 Joe Biden’s son Hunter and Joe’s younger brother, James, purchased the firm. On their first day on the job, they showed up with Joe’s other son, Beau, and two large men and ordered the hedge fund’s chief of compliance to fire its president, according to a Paradigm executive who was present.

After the firing, the two large men escorted the fund’s president out of the firm’s midtown Manhattan office, and James Biden laid out his vision for the fund’s future. “Don’t worry about investors,” he said, according to the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation. “We've got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden.”

At the time, the senator was just months away from both assuming the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and launching his second presidential bid. According to the executive, James Biden made it clear he viewed the fund as a way to take money from rich foreigners who could not legally give money to his older brother or his campaign account. “We've got investors lined up in a line of 747s filled with cash ready to invest in this company,” the executive remembers James Biden saying.

At this, the executive recalled, Beau Biden, who was then running for attorney general of Delaware, turned bright red. He told his uncle, “This can never leave this room, and if you ever say it again, I will have nothing to do with this.”

It does appear that after that time, Beau concentrated on his own political career separately from other family interests. The story continued,

Three former Paradigm executives said James and Hunter Biden also sought to capitalize on Joe’s strong ties to labor unions in the hopes of landing investments from them; Charles Provini, who briefly served as Paradigm’s president, said both James and Hunter repeatedly cited Joe’s political ties when they recruited him to work for the fund. “I was told because of his relationships with the unions that they felt as though it would be favorably looked upon to invest in the fund as long as it was a good fund,” Provini recalled.

. . . There is no indication the Bidens ever succeeded in bringing new foreign money into the fund, but their involvement with Paradigm, which spanned the final two years of Joe’s Senate career and first two years of his vice presidency, was troubled for other reasons: In James and Hunter’s five-year tenure, Paradigm became associated with a number of alleged and confirmed frauds, including Allen Stanford’s multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, while seeking to draw on their powerful relative’s political allies for financing.

The story then briefly memtions Jim's involvement with Hill International, the Philadelphia construction company that in 2011 tried to use Joe's influence to get a $1.5 billion contract to build affordable housing in Iraq, which I covered here. In that post, I linked to the account of a separate episode, also in 2011, in which Hill International hired Jim to use Joe's influence to negotiate a secret deal with the Saudis to settle a dispute over a desalinization plant and get out of paying a law firm the 40% cut outlined in their contract.

The record is silent until the 2017 $40,000 "loan repayment" check from Jim's wide Sara to Joe that the Comer committee revealed this week. According to the chairman,

It all began with a shakedown in the summer of 2017 when Hunter Biden sent a message to his CEFC associate demanding a $10 million capital payment. As Hunter Biden extorted this associate, Hunter claimed he was sitting with his father, and that the Biden network would turn on his associate if he didn’t pony up the money. The extortion scheme worked. Days later, $5 million flowed in from a Chinese affiliate of CEFC. Over the following three weeks, Biden family members made a series of complicated financial transactions to hide the source of the China money.

. . . First, Northern International Capital, a Chinese company associated with CEFC, wired $5,000,000 to Hudson West III, a joint venture established by Hunter Biden and a CEFC associate.

Then, Hudson West III sent $400,000 to an entity owned and controlled by Hunter Biden.

Next, Hunter Biden wired $150,000 to Lion Hall Group, a company owned by Joe Biden’s brother James and sister-in-law Sara Biden.

Sara Biden then withdrew $50,000 in cash from Lion Hall Group. Later the same day, she deposited it into her and James Biden’s personal checking account.

A few days later, Sara Biden cut a check to Joe Biden for $40,000. The memo line of the check said, “loan repayment.”

After that, we have the story of the 2018 check for $200,000 from Jim to Joe, also characterized as a "loan repayment", which I covered in this post. Jim secured $600,000 in loans from a failing health care company, Americore, on the basis that he could use Joe's influence to secure new investors to Americore from the Middle East. However, as seems to be typical with Jim's various schemes, the investments never materialized, and Americore declared bankruptcy.

[A] Chapter 11 trustee sued James Biden alleging that the company loaned him $600,000 while it was struggling to stay afloat.

"Instead, of complying with his fiduciary responsibilities, Defendant helped Debtors procure an ill-advised bridge loan from a hedge fund that had a deleterious impact on the financial affairs of the Debtor and ultimately forced Debtors into bankruptcy, as he never delivered the promised the large investment from the Middle East," the bankruptcy court document reads. "And worse, Defendant never repaid the Loans to Americore Health, including during the time that Debtors were strapped for cash."

Jim eventually settled the suit for $350,000. So what we have are five data points in Jim's career, which is likely much more extensive than the record currently shows:

1. The 2006 takeover with Hunter of Paradigm Global advisers, in which Jim claimed to be able to use Joe's influence to get union pension fund investments, which never materialized
2. The 2011 effort to use Joe's influence to secure a $1.5 billion contract for Hill International to build affordable housing in Iraq, which never materialized
3. The 2011 effort to use Joe's influence to secure Saudi reimbursement to Hill International for a desalinization plant, in an effort to stiff a law firm out of its fee for that work
4. The 2017 laundering of a $5 million payment to the Bidens from CEFC, some of which wound up in a $40,000 check to Joe from Jim's wife, Sara
5. The 2018 check for $200,000 from Jim to Joe, apparently financed by loans to Jim from Americore on the expectation that Jim would use Joe's invluence to get Middle Eastern money for Americore, which never materialized.

Looking at this pattern from 30,000 feet, I have a few impressions. One is that Jim is a con artist -- at least in these examples, he claims to be able to use Joe's influence to get investments that never take place, and he gets money up front for doing this, which he never repays when the deals fall through. The second is that, whether or not the deals fall through, he's also able to get money from the marks on the basis that if he doesn't, Joe will be angry at the marks.

The third is that Joe is aware of the scam and in fact collects some type of commission or franchise fee for the use of his name, disguised as "loan repayments".

Or at least, that's how it looks to me. My surmise is that as new instances come up, they'll tend to fit this overall pattern, a promise of financial gain via payments to Jim for Joe's influence, which never quite pans out. Then Jim either doubles down on the scam, demanding more money, or he skedaddles under the threat that Joe will be angry if the mark complains. All of this is enabled via franchise fees to Joe for the use of his name.

My guess is this has been going on for much of Joe's political career, and Hunter is just the next generation of a family business.