OPINION:
What’s in a name? That depends on who you ask – some names are more valuable than others.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is asking President Biden whether his is worth $200,000 (or was in 2018, before inflation spiked). That was the amount of a check the president’s brother James wrote to Joe ostensibly as a “loan repayment.” Mr. Comer wants to know the details because there’s no record of such a loan elsewhere in the president’s documents.
It seems like a worthy question, given the allegations of Hunter Biden repeatedly using the family name to land lucrative sinecures at Ukrainian and Chinese energy companies – “10% for the Big Buy” and all that. There aren’t too many families with $200,000 checks circulating, let alone life-long public servants in a position to make that kind of loan.
While he’s at it, Chairman Comer shouldn’t neglect the other Biden brother. Frank Biden is a serial name-trader, going back at least to when he was a Florida real estate developer, and Joe was U.S. vice president.
Since 2018, Frank has been a non-attorney senior adviser at the Berman Law Group, a Boca Raton, Florida law firm. On Jan. 20, 2021, the day of his brother’s presidential inauguration, Frank placed an ad in Florida’s Daily Business Review.
As CNBC reported at the time, “The ad focuses on a lawsuit the firm is leading against a group of Florida sugar cane companies. It features a photo of Frank Biden, along with quotes regarding his relationship with the incoming president and the family name.”
“The two Biden brothers have long held a commitment to pushing environmental issues to the forefront,” the ad reads, “the president-elect has vowed to rejoin the Paris Agreement and wants to set ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets, for example.” It quotes Frank saying, “My brother is a model for how to go about doing this work.”
Berman Law’s (and Frank Biden’s) “environmental justice” class action suit maintained that the smoke from the controlled burning of sugar cane fields causes pollution that harms nearby residents. Coincidentally, the suit was filed on the same day then-candidate Joe Biden published his environmental agenda in June 2019. Powerful environmental activist groups have since latched on to sugar cane field burning as a reason to demand the government lower the already controversial National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).
Since Frank Biden ran his infamous Inauguration Day ad, several federal agencies have gotten in on the action. A cynical observer should be forgiven for noting that many of these actions could theoretically be cited to support Frank Biden’s long-time professional goals. The once-reputable space agency NASA has issued grants for papers promoting the claim that links sugar field burning to asthma in local communities. Also, the National Institutes of Health continue funding research that could feed into more legal action.
For its part, the EPA has issued proposed regulations to lower the NAAQS standards, citing “asthma attacks … disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations…from a source, such as fields,…or fires.” Meanwhile, the agency appears to have cut corners on the best emissions technology – through the use of Purple Air monitors – that has produced unreliable readings for places at the center of the sugar field burning debate. This has not stopped environmental special interests deeply connected to dozens of current Biden administration officials from using similar data to file Civil Rights Act complaints with the EPA and USDA requesting an investigation into the same companies that were targeted by Berman Law and Frank Biden.
Over at the Department of Justice, President Biden’s appointees have opened a new litigation office to target disfavored public and private sector actors using environmental justice claims as the basis to extract significant financial penalties. That office’s report highlights large sums extracted from private companies and others in the name of “environmental justice” through settlement agreements. It’s unclear whether and to what extent the sugar industry is on their short list of potential litigation targets. My group, the Functional Government Initiative, intends to find out. We have sought public records across various agencies to understand why and how these federal agencies have come to coincidentally take several actions that could stand to boost President Biden’s brother’s hopes of profiting off of the administration’s environmental justice agenda.
Given the revelations and allegations that keep coming regarding the Biden family, Chairman Comer and the House Oversight Committee should look into the many sordid relationships that continue to make Frank Biden’s dream possible.
Of course, Frank Biden has denied using his brother to drum up business. “I have never used my brother to obtain clients for my firm. Our firm has long been involved [with] this lawsuit. Social justice is something I have been involved in for years,” he said at the time. Another thing he has clearly done for years is name-trading, and it’s squalid and wrong. Any attempt to use the name through connected special interests to push federal employees to manipulate policy to align with Biden family business interests would be criminal.
Chairman Comer should investigate. Where there’s smoke, more often than not, there’s fire.
• Pete McGinnis is the communications director at the Functional Government Initiative
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