Witness links Biden money to sketchy business of brother; deals include loan sharks, bilking seniors

President Biden allegedly profited from his brother’s fraudulent business deals, according to a new witness in the House impeachment inquiry.

James Biden, 74, often leveraged his elder brother, including a promise of access to “a future Biden administration” to cash in on lucrative and sometimes shady business deals. House investigators now have followed the money trail into the president’s bank account.

According to new witness testimony, the source of a $200,000 check that James Biden paid to his brother in March 2018 could have come only from predatory loans or senior citizens’ money fraudulently invested by James Biden’s business partner Michael Lewitt.

The House impeachment inquiry is homing in on James Biden as investigators dig into whether the president pocketed money from his family’s lucrative business deals during his time as vice president in the Obama administration and after leaving office.

The House voted to formalize the impeachment investigation into the president this month and subpoenaed James Biden to appear in December for a closed-door deposition. The two sides are still negotiating a date for him to testify, Republican aides said.

On Monday, House investigators interviewed Carol Fox, the U.S. trustee for the Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings for Americore Health LLC. The struggling rural hospital operator partnered with James Biden specifically to help expand the business through his political connections.

Ms. Fox sued James Biden in 2022 for failing to “deliver on a promise” he made to Americore to use “his last name” to help the company win a large investment from the Middle East.

According to a source familiar with her testimony to House investigators, Ms. Fox “identified no services James Biden provided to Americore,” yet the company paid the president’s brother $600,000, which Americore identified as a loan.

Of that sum, $200,000 ended up in President Biden’s bank account from a check James Biden sent to his brother on March 1, 2018.

The president said his brother sent him the money to repay a loan. James Biden wrote “loan repayment” on the check.

House investigators have received no documents backing up the claim.

Ms. Fox “identified only two possible sources” of the money: predatory loans or senior citizens’ money fraudulently invested by Mr. Lewitt, an Americore investor and James Biden’s business partner.

Ms. Fox said Mr. Lewitt “pulled money that elderly Americans had placed in an investment fund” and transmitted it to Americore, which then paid James Biden.

On the same day Americore sent $200,000 to James Biden, he wrote a check to his brother for the same amount.

A Democratic source disputed the readout of Ms. Fox’s testimony, which has not been released.

“Republicans pushed Fox to make a series of speculations layered upon each other, based on false and misleading premises, which Fox admittedly had no firsthand knowledge of and made clear that she could not corroborate Republicans’ speculation for that reason,” the Democratic source said.

Ms. Fox, the source said, had no direct knowledge about the source of the money paid to James Biden from Americore and said she saw no evidence Mr. Biden was involved in his brother’s business deals.

Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who has spent years investigating Mr. Biden’s involvement in his family’s business deals, suspects the president was involved in helping his family profit stemming from his days as vice president.

“It’s not surprising that more evidence is surfacing on a regular basis,” Mr. Johnson told The Washington Times.

House investigators and court documents reviewed by The Times show James Biden promised Americore “access to a future Biden administration and the highest levels of government … and that his brother, Joe Biden, had been made aware of the business, which would be made profitable when it could become part of the Biden platform.”

Congressional investigators said a witness in the lawsuit stated that James Biden, in phone conversations with Americore executives, would “explain that Joe Biden was in the room with him and James had been explaining the deal to him.”

Americore charged in court that James Biden never delivered on his promise to bring in large investments from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, where he allegedly developed relationships during his brother’s time as vice president.

The company said James Biden failed to repay the $600,000 loan they provided at his request. James Biden settled with Americore for $350,000 in September 2022.

Ms. Fox told House investigators that she saw no records or documentation showing Americore had given James Biden a loan, as the $600,000 payment was referenced. She said the president’s brother helped procure “an ill-advised bridge loan” that pushed Americore into bankruptcy after he failed to come through on the promises of large investments from the Middle East.

David Randolph Smith, a lawyer who represented James Biden in the lawsuit, did not respond to a request from The Times. He told The Wall Street Journal in 2022 that the president’s brother “provided extensive financial and consulting services to Americore” and “had a vision of revitalizing failing rural hospitals.”

The president and congressional Democrats have rejected Republicans’ claims that Mr. Biden played any role in his family’s business deals, despite witness testimony that he phoned in to or stopped by son Hunter Biden’s business meetings dating back to his time as vice president. Mr. Biden copied in his son and son’s business partners on White House emails, shielding his own identity with pseudonyms.

White House counsel Richard Sauber, in a letter sent last month to House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, said the Republicans’ requests for documents and subpoenas of Biden family members are unjustified.

Mr. Comer and Mr. Jordan have subpoenaed Hunter Biden, who has refused to appear for closed-door testimony and now faces a contempt of Congress vote in the House. House lawmakers have sought interviews with additional Biden family members and their associates. House investigators say Biden family members and their business partners pocketed $24 million from foreign business deals.

All of the family members, Mr. Sauber said in his letter to Mr. Comer, “are private citizens.” Mr. Sauber said the Republican investigation has refuted “baseless allegations against the president.”

The House impeachment inquiry’s focus on the president’s brother follows a report by The Washington Post that the FBI had secretly recorded James Biden in an unrelated bribery probe of Mississippi trial lawyer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs in 2008.

The president’s brother was not the subject of the investigation, but the FBI recorded him finalizing plans to create a consulting firm with an associate of Mr. Scruggs who simultaneously began delivering bribes to judges on Mr. Scruggs’ behalf.

A decade earlier, Mr. Scruggs paid James Biden $100,000 for help persuading then-Sen. Joseph R. Biden to support the massive tobacco settlement agreement in 1998.

“I probably wouldn’t have hired him if he wasn’t the senator’s brother,” said Mr. Scruggs, who served six years in federal prison on the bribery scheme.