What the President’s Brother Said

James Biden, the youthful brother of President Joe Biden, defended himself and the president throughout a closed-door assembly in Congress on Wednesday.

In his opening assertion to the Home Oversight and Judiciary Committees, Biden mentioned that he had “nothing to cover” and accused Republicans who’ve recommended that he improperly benefitted from his brother’s standing of being “both mistaken, ill-informed or flat-out mendacity.”

Biden careworn that the president “by no means had any involvement or any direct or oblique monetary pursuits” in his enterprise affairs, earlier than arguing that there was “no foundation” for Republicans to pursue the impeachment inquiry into his brother, whom he credited for “private integrity and character.”

“Due to my intimate information of my brother’s private integrity and character, in addition to my very own sturdy ethics, I’ve all the time stored my skilled life separate from our shut private relationship,” Biden mentioned. “I by no means requested my brother to take any official motion on behalf of me, my enterprise associates or anybody else.”

“It’s tough to open my private {and professional} life to such intense public scrutiny, however I’m doing so to adjust to the committee’s inquiry,” he continued. “The unfavourable and damaging assumptions about me and my relationship with my brother Joe are incorrect. There is no such thing as a foundation for this inquiry to proceed.”

Elsewhere within the opening assertion, Biden mentioned that checks he wrote to his brother for $200,000 and $40,000 in 2017 and 2018, which had been labeled as “mortgage reimbursement,” had been certainly private loans that he had repaid.

Some Republicans have claimed, with none clear proof, that the checks had been as a substitute a approach for Biden to “launder” cash he acquired from China by means of his brother, whose two phrases as vp resulted in January 2017.

Newsweek reached out for remark to the White Home by way of e mail on Wednesday night time.

Biden was the primary member of his household to seem for a deposition within the impeachment inquiry. The president’s son Hunter Biden, who is alleged to have a robust relationship with James, his uncle, is ready to testify subsequent week.

The content material of James Biden’s remarks past the opening assertion is unknown, as a transcript from the non-public listening to has but to be launched. Nevertheless, some Home lawmakers weighed in on the testimony in feedback to reporters outdoors of the assembly.

“He has mentioned loads of issues which have contradicted himself in that testimony,” Republican Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona mentioned throughout a break, in response to the Related Press. “So, once you see the transcript, you may see.”

Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland had a unique view, telling reporters that lawmakers had “heard nothing indicating that Joe Biden had something to do with the enterprise ventures of Hunter Biden or James Biden and nothing has contradicted that primary understanding.”

The impeachment inquiry has not too long ago taken a significant blow with final week’s indictment of former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who was hit with federal felony expenses, accused of fabricating a declare that Joe and Hunter Biden took bribes from executives at Ukrainian vitality firm Burisma.

A Division of Justice court docket submitting on Wednesday additionally alleged that Smirnov has ties to “high-level” Russian intelligence brokers and authorities officers, a few of whom are mentioned to be collaborating in an effort to intervene within the 2024 U.S. presidential election.