Joe As Barack's "Point Man"

It's generally acknowledged that Joe was designated Barack Obama's "point man" for Ukraine. For instance, per Axios,

True: Joe Biden was the Obama administration's point man on Ukraine while his son was working for Burisma, visiting the country several times from 2014 to 2016.

On the other hand, I have yet to see any sort of job description for "point man", except that as Axios implies, it seemed to involve whirlwind visits on Air Force Two and meetings with top people. But just recently, poking around for background on Joe's bother Jim, I found this at NBC News from April 2016:

Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Iraq Thursday for a visit intended to help resolve a political crisis that's hindering efforts to defeat the Islamic State group.

Biden flew overnight from Washington to the Iraqi capital. The White House isn't publicly disclosing his itinerary due to security concerns, but Biden is expected to meet with Iraqi leaders.

. . . Though the trip was scheduled months ago, the vice president is “arriving at a moment of a lot of turbulence,” the official told reporters.

“The vice president has been the point person on Iraq for the administration since the beginning,” a senior administration official told reporters traveling with the vice president. “He’s been itching to get back for a while; looking for an opportunity. This seemed like a good moment to do it.”

We don't know who the "senior administration official" was with Joe on the plane -- it could even have been Amos Hochstein, who was with Joe on various flights to Ukraine and conducted similar briefings then. But whoever it may have been, he appears to have had the authority to reveal Joe's "point man" or "point person" status, which had, as far as anyone can tell, previously been unknown except to insiders.

But here's an even more intriguing piece in the New York Post from October 2012:

James Biden isn’t a big name in the business of residential housing development, so what exactly qualifies him to work at a construction company and share in the winnings of a $1.5 billion project to build affordable homes in Iraq?

If you said it has something to do with his last name, the one shared by his older brother Vice President Joe Biden, you wouldn’t be far off. At least that’s the guess of some Wall Street analysts who cover the Marlton, NJ-based company Hill International and think they’ve seen yet another sordid tale of crony capitalism.

. . . {I]t got some good news not long after its housing subsidiary hired James Biden as an executive vice president in late 2010. Just six months later, Hill won one of its biggest contracts ever, a $1.5 billion deal to build at least 100,000 affordable homes in Iraq.

A good deal for Hill, a relative newcomer to building homes — and for James Biden, who as one partner will get a good share of that $1.5 billion.

The deal is contingent on the Iraqi government providing financing, which it has yet to do, but Hill execs tell analysts the money could start flowing by the end of the year. That’s when everyone involved, James Biden included, will start collecting on tens of millions of dollars in profits.

One friend of James Biden’s estimates his net worth at around $7 million, yet he seems to have a remarkable lack of concrete business experience. An attorney who’s done work for him called him a “serial entrepreneur,” but didn’t name the startups he was responsible for.

However, the deal never went through:

The founder of US construction management company Hill International has admitted he “was wrong” to invest in the failed HillStone housing project in Iraq.

Irvin Richter says both Hill and its partner in the doomed project, South Korean developer TRAC Development Group, lacked experience in what was an ambitious deal.

Hill signed two contracts with TRAC Development Group in 2011, along with its majority-owned subsidiary HillStone International (the minority share is owned by a group of minority partners including US vice-president Joe Biden’s brother James, an executive with Hill’s housing division) to build 100,000 units in an overall 500,000 housing unit project in Iraq.

However, the project never eventuated and Hill was eventually forced to concede an estimated $1.5bn from its backlog in 2013.

Jim Biden appears elsewhere in Hill International's history:

Now-first brother James Biden was hired to help a Philadelphia construction company resolve a decades-old dispute with the Saudi government because he was the sibling of then-Vice President Joe Biden, court documents reveal.

. . . The affidavit, first obtained by DailyMail.com, was filed in a dispute between the construction company, Hill International, and one of three law firms it hired to help claw back approximately $140 million the Saudis owed for a desalinization plant built by a Hill subsidiary in the 1980s.

That firm, Lankford & Reed, claims that Hill International also hired James Biden, now 73, in 2011 to negotiate a secret deal with the Saudis to settle the dispute – and get out of paying Lankford the 40% cut outlined in their contract.

In July 2017, Thomas Sullivan, a former Treasury Department official-turned-private investigator hired by Lankford, drove to James Biden’s home in suburban Philadelphia to discuss his role with Hill.

. . . The first brother added that he was often tapped to represent Hill in meetings “because, of course, the name didn’t hurt,” Sullivan recalled.

James Biden also told Sullivan he had attended a February 2012 meeting with Saudi officials at which Hill would receive “final payment” for the desalination plant. Biden added that he had attended the meeting “because of his position and relationship” with his older brother, then Barack Obama’s No. 2.

According to the president’s sibling, Hill’s payment for its subsidiary’s work “would be made in both cash and ‘a very large amount'” of future business, Sullivan said.

After the meeting, Sullivan alleged, James Biden’s wife Sara walked him to his car and revealed that her husband and his older brother Joe were very close, and that they told each other everything.”

So what we're starting to see is a set of business relationships between Jim Biden and various other parties, including what looks like a long-term deal with Hill International, to use Joe's influence to make deals in places like Iraq and Saudi Arabia, with payments to Jim on an implicit understanding that he'll talk to Joe, who will get the client what's needed.

We have a lengthy and detailed timeline on Hunter, largely courtesy of his laptop. But I'm beginning to wonder if we don't now have a potential equivalent long list of deals -- some done, some not -- involving Jim. And oddly, whie Joe was Obama's point man for Ukraine, he traveled there only six times as vice president. But according to James Jeffrey, US ambassador to Iraq while Joe was vice president,

During my 20-month tenure in Iraq, Obama called [Prime Minister Nouri al-]Maliki just three times and met with him only once. Biden has been to Iraq 24 times. In Obama’s first term, Biden was at the center of all the Iraq decisions[.]

So Joe as vice president was in a position to influence far more in Iraq than he could influence in Ukraine, and it looks like he did far more meddling in Iraq's affairs. What other business was brother Jim doing there? But maybe more important, what did Barack Obama know? As we began to see yesterday, he had the FBI on Joe's case. And from what we hear, Barack never thought all that highly of Joe. Why did he give Joe such free rein in Ukraine and Iraq? Look at Barack's expression in the photo at the top of this post, as opposed to Joe's.

Which guy do you think is smarter?